Money Stolen from my Account

Gulliver

I protect myself by not having any money in my account to begin with...

Bellycaster

Gulliver said:

I protect myself by not having any money in my account to begin with...

That's the price of being a Guitarist.

  

thermionic

Quite a few years ago now I just happened to log in to my main HSBC account and noticed £1 had gone out to a company name I’d never heard of. I googled and it was a charity that took underprivileged kids on holidays where they could ride donkeys (no really). Anyway, on their page was a notice apologising for the scams that had involved them. I phoned HSBC straight away and told them I hadn’t made this £1 payment. The person on the phone had clearly seen this kind of thing before and asked if I’d also made a payment of £90 to O2 which was about to go through. Nope. Card stopped, new card issued and money refunded in a few days.

What apparently happened was a criminal buys a load of stolen card details from another criminal. Some of these are either fake or have already been caught by the bank by the time the criminal gets them. So they try a token payment of £1 to a random charity, and if it works they rack up as much on the card as they can before it gets found out. O2 was often used then because out of the main mobile phone companies, they would accept payment on a pay as you go phone with no attempt at checking if the payment was made by the owner of the phone.

I don’t know if this £1 check is going on, but if you spot any strange payment on your account, give them a ring immediately. Good luck to the OP, I’m sure it will be sorted by the bank.

viz

Sambostar said:

How do you surmise the fraudsters got your details, or did they just get lucky?

 If it doesn't work out, Get yourself a Nokia 105, go to your local branch and take them all captive with ammonium nitrate scaffold pole incendiary devices planted in the bins around the perimeter with electronic firing circuits...make sure you wear a mask though otherwise you might get covid.

Corrected

Musicwolf

thermionic said:

Quite a few years ago now I just happened to log in to my main HSBC account and noticed £1 had gone out to a company name I’d never heard of.

Many years ago I got a call from my bank's security team asking me to confirm the last three payments on my card due to suspicious activity.  When I questioned them further it turned out that the transaction that had triggered the alert was when I'd used the card to pay for the M6 toll rd.  Apparantly it was a common way that criminals would test to see whether a stollen card was still active by checking it on the toll rd (no pin number required).

Stratavarious

Hope it gets sorted.  My elderly father, must get 3 or 4 scam calls a week and several scam emails a day.  I get a few too.   Scum.    At least he is on the ball and checks his statements for any odd payments.

Everyone shreds and burns receipts, bills and statements?  

Avoiding letting a card out of sight for copying of details is one benefit of chip and pin.

Rabs

Stratavarious said:

Hope it gets sorted.  My elderly father, must get 3 or 4 scam calls a week and several scam emails a day.  I get a few too.   Scum.    At least he is on the ball and checks his statements for any odd payments.

Everyone shreds and burns receipts, bills and statements?  

Avoiding letting a card out of sight for copying of details is one benefit of chip and pin.

Yup we got loads of those scam phone calls too.. And my mum is alone and has dementia... She would tell us about calls she got and how she gave some information to them (we can never be quite sure because of her dementia).. 

We had to cancel her credit card several times the last few years..

In the end we got one of those phones that block all numbers apart from what you program in to it.. It has totally worked.

But yes.. these people are total scum..

JanekLubanski

Man.....this is bad. I hope you get full recompense and the bad guys are caught. I remember getting a text from my bank one Sunday morning around 6 years ago telling me there was some unusual payments from my account. Scam text I thought but I called the phone number on my card and indeed £128 had been spent at a petrol station in Arizona, USA.....had I made that payment?,  Errr no was my reply....I haven't been further than Leeds (I was probably in shock!). Got my cash back and a new debit card. Bank thought my card was cloned via a 'skimmed' cash point machine.

Rabs

JanekLubanski said:

Man.....this is bad. I hope you get full recompense and the bad guys are caught. I remember getting a text from my bank one Sunday morning around 6 years ago telling me there was some unusual payments from my account. Scam text I thought but I called the phone number on my card and indeed £128 had been spent at a petrol station in Arizona, USA.....had I made that payment?,  Errr no was my reply....I haven't been further than Leeds (I was probably in shock!). Got my cash back and a new debit card. Bank thought my card was cloned via a 'skimmed' cash point machine.

Well thats one of the other things about all of what we have been going through with this..

It was of course reported to the police.. You have to get a crime number to get your money back.. But they do nothing about it.. I dont think they even look for the people that are doing this. In our case too the person went in to the bank, surely there is footage of them?

But really no one seems to care. Not even the bank.. Its just easier and cheaper for them to give you the money back.

TimmyO

When I got stung a few years ago (less than a grand) they refunded me almost right away but made it clear I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork and send it in - if I didn't by a certain date they would reverse the refund and if it showed I'd been silly/complicit likewise. 

Point being they assumed I was due the money back but reserved the right to reverse it 

JanekLubanski

Rabs said:

JanekLubanski said:

Man.....this is bad. I hope you get full recompense and the bad guys are caught. I remember getting a text from my bank one Sunday morning around 6 years ago telling me there was some unusual payments from my account. Scam text I thought but I called the phone number on my card and indeed £128 had been spent at a petrol station in Arizona, USA.....had I made that payment?,  Errr no was my reply....I haven't been further than Leeds (I was probably in shock!). Got my cash back and a new debit card. Bank thought my card was cloned via a 'skimmed' cash point machine.

Well thats one of the other things about all of what we have been going through with this..

It was of course reported to the police.. You have to get a crime number to get your money back.. But they do nothing about it.. I dont think they even look for the people that are doing this. In our case too the person went in to the bank, surely there is footage of them?

But really no one seems to care. Not even the bank.. Its just easier and cheaper for them to give you the money back.

I only posted my personal experience. I imagine the outcome will be different for other people. I apologise if you have taken offence but surely getting your money back takes precedence over catching the perpetrators.

Rabs

JanekLubanski said:

Rabs said:

JanekLubanski said:

Man.....this is bad. I hope you get full recompense and the bad guys are caught. I remember getting a text from my bank one Sunday morning around 6 years ago telling me there was some unusual payments from my account. Scam text I thought but I called the phone number on my card and indeed £128 had been spent at a petrol station in Arizona, USA.....had I made that payment?,  Errr no was my reply....I haven't been further than Leeds (I was probably in shock!). Got my cash back and a new debit card. Bank thought my card was cloned via a 'skimmed' cash point machine.

Well thats one of the other things about all of what we have been going through with this..

It was of course reported to the police.. You have to get a crime number to get your money back.. But they do nothing about it.. I dont think they even look for the people that are doing this. In our case too the person went in to the bank, surely there is footage of them?

But really no one seems to care. Not even the bank.. Its just easier and cheaper for them to give you the money back.

I only posted my personal experience. I imagine the outcome will be different for other people. I apologise if you have taken offence but surely getting your money back takes precedence over catching the perpetrators.

No... No offence taken at all... 

I was just saying that the police arent really that interested in catching them.. And the big problem with that is the scammers will just keep getting away with it cos the bank and the police will just do what ever is easier and cheaper for them, and that is usually to return the money... And for the police its to report it and do nothing. 

PolarityMan

As lot of it is international which is prob a big reason they don't pursue it. Kinda hard to get chi see or russian authorities to give a shit I expect.

PolarityMan

Also it's often the banks themselves that leak. I k ow someone who got their card detail stolen from a card that they only got to get a discount on a holiday and the only payment they had ever made on it was the deposit and balance for said holiday.

rogd

Apparently my Missus bought 2 Big Macs in Florida a few years ago for 128 dollars!!

duotone

Switch625 said:

She probably just said it to cover their own backs, can't imagine any scenario in which you wouldn't be refunded. If you had fallen victim to a scam call and willingly gave your details to somebody then it might've been different. But in this case it's unlikely. As stressful as it is try not to worry too much about it until they've done their investigation.

A neighbour in his 80’s around 8 years ago was a target of Courier Fraud https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-your-money-51160548
He did get all of his money back (I think it was around £7000) it just took a while.

LordBucketHead

Someone accessed my bank account and moved £3.5K from a savings account to my current account at a quarter to midnight. They then attempted to move £250 out of the current account. The bank robot stopped it and they rang me the next morning to see if I wanted the transaction to be allowed. They'd used telephone banking which I haven't used for about 10 years (and scrapped permanently that same morning). I've had one or two scrapes but as I buy everything with PayPal - I just open a resolution case with them and leave it to them to sort out. They've got 100% success rate for me. 

Snags

Happily the few times I've been done I've found out because the CC company have phoned me to say "Can we check your most recent transactions, we think you've been nobbled?"

Each time they've been right. Annoyingly. those calls almost always seem to come in as we're going away for a week, or weekend, and are likely to be hitting the card harder than normal, and of course the bloody thing ends up blocked until they can send you the new one. And they can't send it to a non-registered address ...

Still, it's an inconvenience I can cope with given they at least stop it before it gets too far. So far.

Bellycaster

So, they called tonight just to say that they have to look into further details. They asked me if I use services such as WHO or UK Regs, both of which are gambling sites. I said no as I have honestly never heard of them. They asked if anyone else in the house uses them, to which I answered that I live alone.

So, I'm still waiting and stressed out. I thought it would be resolved by now.

They've also only just told me I have to report it to the Police. I know that sounds obvious, but I thought they involved the Police, so I hadn't yet.

boogieman

I’ve had my card cloned twice in the past and never had to get the police involved. Is that a recent thing? 

The first time was when we were holiday in the US and had used the credit card a fair bit. It was only when we got back that I spotted a couple of $10 items that I was sure weren’t mine because we were flying back home at the time. They turned out to be subscriptions to an American wrestling tv channel, presumably a test purchase before the thieves really hit the account. The c/c company sorted it all out pretty quickly before the cloned card could be used in anger.