The scam stories keep coming. Not long before Christmas we heard from a reader in the west who lost thousands of euro over the course of an afternoon.
It all started with what he thought was a text from his bank at 2.44pm asking if he had a standing order in place for €1,341. The message gave him the option of replying Y for yes and N for no, so without giving it too much thought he replied with N.
“A second text followed telling me that a member of the security team would call me,” he writes.
Moments later his phone rang and a man who identified himself as James said he was a Bank of Ireland employee and explained that our reader’s account had been compromised.
“He asked me a series of routine questions such as: ‘Does anyone else have access to my account? Did I log in in public places such as cafes where someone could have seen me logging in?’ I was completely convinced he was genuine,” our reader continues.
It just so happens that he has two Bank of Ireland accounts – a personal one and a business one. The man who called himself James said that our reader would “need to reset my accounts and link my Revolut account to my Bank of Ireland account. He said that he would transfer virtual money from one account to the other and I followed his instructions and he managed to transfer €3,750 from work and €2,400 from my account.”
“James” then asked our reader to fill in what he called a fictitious Iban with the name Gavin attached to it – he sent us the full name but we will leave the surname out – and he would transfer the virtual money back to our reader’s Bank of Ireland (BOI) accounts.
“He told me to check my app account after an hour and that everything would be reset. An hour later I checked the app to find out I had been scammed. I contacted BOI fraud prevention and reported it. They reset my pin and told me to contact Revolut because as far as they could see their trail ended with the two payments to Revolut.”
[ Scam calls from UK +44 numbers in Ireland: Who is it and what should I do?Opens in new window ]
So our reader did that and he was given instructions on how to report the crime.
This was five hours after the first contact was made.
Then our reader ran into the sand.
He said that Bank of Ireland told him that the “transactions were forwarded to my Revolut account and as far as they are concerned it’s not their problem. Revolut are also washing their hands.”
It is an unfortunate story and when we contacted Revolut we were not overly optimistic they would be able to do anything for our reader as he was clearly the victim of an impersonation scam, a type of authorised push payment (APP) fraud.
In a statement, Revolut said it was “very sorry to hear of [our reader’s] case or any instance where our customers are targeted by ruthless and highly sophisticated criminals. In this instance, Revolut showed [our reader] a warning against a possible impersonation scam. Unfortunately, he bypassed this, authorising multiple transactions, inadvertently sending funds to a fraudster impersonating an employee of another Irish bank. We are genuinely sorry to say that he is ineligible for reimbursement in this instance.”
A spokesman said the company was “unable to comment on the specifics of these interventions, so as to not provide any insight that could help ruthless criminals socially engineer their victims and bypass these”.
However, he said Revolut was “constantly innovating and testing a range of eye-catching warnings”.
“Last year alone, we prevented more than €700 million in potential fraud against our customers globally by implementing real-time AI fraud detection systems, transaction limits, in-app warnings and delayed payments for suspicious transactions, biometric authentication requirements, in-app calls to help customers expose phone call scams, and providing educational resources to help consumers remain informed about all the potential risks.”
He added that Revolut’s financial crime prevention team “now represents almost a third of our global workforce, and, alongside many other payments firms, we deploy a number of different interventions that are solely designed to ‘break the spell’ of scammers and fraudsters. Any reported fraud to Revolut automatically triggers human intervention for our customer service team, ensuring a user’s case is handled by skilled live agents with expertise in financial crime who are able to help customers in moments of distress.”
He added: “Criminals are always looking for new and different ways to perform fraudulent activity and the complexity and constant evolution of these threats has become an industry-wide issue.”
The spokesperson advised anyone worried that they might be a victim of a scam, or concerned that they don’t recognise an outgoing transaction on their account, to freeze their cards immediately.
He added they should also update their Revolut passcode as well as any personal email account passwords, and “contact Revolut customer support via our secure in-app chat”.
[ Have you ever been subject to a scam call?Opens in new window ]
We are unsurprised by the response, as in our experience when people give criminals the green light to transfer money – albeit unwittingly – it is virtually impossible to retrieve it. All we can suggest is that the story should serve as a reminder to all readers to be incredibly suspicious of any email, phone or SMS correspondence from any bank or any source that seeks information of any kind unless you know exactly who they are and what they need the information for.
In this instance, for example, our reader could have saved themselves a lot of financial – and indeed emotional – heartache had they paused for a beat when the first call came through and disconnected the call before calling their bank on one of its official numbers directly.
That is not to apportion any blame whatsoever. According to figures from the communications watchdog ComReg, Irish consumers lose tens of millions of euro to criminals operating scams of this nature.
We know they can be very plausible and can put people under enormous pressure to act quickly. That is why it is always better to slow things down and don’t trust anyone unless you have a very, very good reason to do so.