How to get your money back after a bank transfer scam

If you’re reading this, then I’m sorry, because it probably means you or a loved one has recently fallen victim to a bank transfer scam. This is the type of fraud where someone tricks you into transferring some or all of your own money to someone you don’t know.

For example, a scammer might pretend to be from your bank’s fraud team and warn that you need to move your money to a “safe account”. But it’s actually an account controlled by the fraudster. Victims typically lose thousands of pounds at a time in transfer scams, which can be devastating.

If a scam has affected you, then you’ve come to the right place. Over the past four years, as the Telegraph’s Consumer Champion, I’ve won back millions of pounds on behalf of readers who’ve been scammed in this exact way. 

With bank transfer fraud a huge and growing problem in the UK, you’d have thought banks would be hot on preventing it, catching criminals, and retrieving customers’ money. Yet they are only returning less than half of stolen money to victims on average, and some banks are much worse than others.

How easy it will be to get your money back after a scam depends on a number of factors: what happened, who you bank with, and your personal circumstances. In this guide, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know to have the best chance of getting your money back yourself.

Don’t suffer alone

But before I get into it, if you’ve fallen victim to a money transfer scam, you may be feeling despair, anger, shame, or all of the above. If this sounds familiar, I want you to know that you’re far from alone.

Brits are losing around half a billion pounds a year and rising to this type of fraud, as criminals are constantly finding new ways to trick unsuspecting banking customers out of their money. If it happens to you, your bank has a duty to be supportive. But sadly, as I hear all too often from readers, their customer agents can be lacking in empathy.

If you’re feeling in need of some support, there are charities that can help: The Victim Support helpline is free to call on 08081689111, or if you’re feeling suicidal, you can call the Samaritans on 116 123.

Applying for a refund

If you think you’ve been scammed, you should inform your bank immediately. You should also contact the bank where your money was sent and let it know the account number as it may be able to freeze the money and return it to you.

You can check which bank it was sent to by using the Faster Payment’s sort code checker. You should also contact Action Fraud, the police’s fraud arm, to record the crime, although be aware that they are rarely able to recover victims’ money.

TOP TIP: If you’ve fallen for an imitation scam in which the fraudster is pretending to be your bank, make sure you are contacting your bank through official channels and be cautious of phone calls that come out of the blue.

Most banks have signed a voluntary agreement to refund you if you’re in this situation and your money cannot be retrieved. It’s called the “contingent reimbursement model (CRM)” code and you can find the list of banks that have signed up to it here. If your bank is a signatory to the CRM code, it should begin the process to investigate your case and look at reimbursing you for your loss, as long as you acted “appropriately”. Your bank must assess your case under the code and give you a decision, and a reason for this.

When you apply for a refund, you can expect one of three different outcomes: a full refund, a partial refund, or no refund. To all get your money back, you’ll usually have to show that:

1. You followed any security warnings from you bank
2. You believed the transaction was genuine
3. You weren’t being careless when you made the payment

If you’re worried you were being careless because you fell for a scam, it’s still worth asking your bank for a refund, especially if the scam was highly sophisticated, or you could be classed as vulnerable, which I’ll come to in more detail in a minute.

Sometimes banks will review a case and decide that the customer was partially to blame for losing money as a result of being careless, but that, on the other hand, it also could have done more to stop the scam. In this event, it will usually offer to refund part of the money, as recommended by the code.

Banks have a duty to keep customers safe from fraud, so if you can prove it failed to do something it should have done to warn or protect you, you’ll stand a higher chance of getting your money back. For example, if you made multiple large transactions in a row or sent a large sum to a new account, and the bank didn’t phone you to check the payments were genuine and legitimate, you should include this in your complaint.

TOP TIP: Write a detailed timeline of events with as much detail as possible about what happened and draw up a spreadsheet showing all the fraudulent transactions. You should submit this to your bank as it will help your bank understand exactly what happened. If you can’t quite remember what happened, you are entitled to request copies of your own data under GDPR rules, including recorded phone calls and notes made about you on the bank’s internal system. Listening back to these may be painful, but it may help you get your money back.

What if my bank isn’t signed up to the code?

Even if your bank isn’t a signatory to the CRM Code, you should still report any fraud to your bank as soon as you discover it. All banks are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority whose guidelines state they must take reasonable steps to protect customers from crime, so if you can demonstrate that they failed to do this, you may still get your money back.

If you’re vulnerable – or helping someone who’s vulnerable

Under the CRM Code and FCA rules, banks must treat customers deemed as “vulnerable” with special care. Vulnerabilities can take many forms and may be permanent or temporary, such as illnesses, mental illnesses, disabilities, or going through a traumatic life event (divorce, death of a loved one etc).

When taking vulnerability into account in any decision to refund a scam victim, banks must consider whether the vulnerability may have affected their decision making at the time of the fraud. Many people are inclined to play down or hide hardships, but if you think this applies to yourself or a loved one, it could be in your interests to declare any potential vulnerabilities when claiming your money back. Always back up your statements with evidence, such as a doctor’s note or hospital records.

My bank’s refusing a full refund – what now?

If you’ve formally made a complaint to your bank, but you don’t think they acted quickly or appropriately enough, you can take it to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which is an independent arbiter of unresolved financial disputes. This is a free service and you have six months from when you originally complained to the bank to apply. Bear in mind that you are likely to be waiting several months before your complaint is answered, especially if it’s complex. 

And of course, you can always write to me for help, but due to the high volume of correspondence I receive I am not able to reply to all cases. Once a case is being actively reviewed by the FOS I am also unable to help.

I wish you the very best of luck.