Your rights if you've been scammed
Where do you stand if you've been ripped off by a scam, or fall victim to identity theft or Chip-and-Pin fraud? Will you get your money back?
When it comes to fraud, prevention is clearly better than cure.
That's why there is so much information and advice available about the methods and tricks used by criminals to obtain our financial details and steal our cash, as well as what precautions we should take.
Donna Werbner gets your two pence on the scams you hate, and finds out how you can protect yourself and stop the scammers from stealing your cash.
But despite the best efforts of banks, regulators, law enforcement agencies and websites such as lovemoney.com, thousands of people will inevitably fall victim to one sort of financial fraud or another this year.
So where do you stand if you've been ripped off by a phishing scam, or had your debit card cloned? Will you get your money back?
By and large, it depends on whether you, the victim, took reasonable steps to prevent the fraud happening, or whether you in some way contributed to your own downfall - perhaps by leaving a written reminder of your PIN in a stolen wallet.
Here are the most common types of fraud, and the view your bank is likely to take if you're affected.
Chip-and-PIN fraud
When chip and PIN was introduced just over four years ago, it was heralded by the banking industry as the magic bullet that would put an end debit- and credit-card fraud.
The system certainly appears to have been effective - it is now much harder for criminals simply to copy a card's magnetic strip and use it to make purchases on the high street.
But despite what the industry says, chip and PIN is far from foolproof. Last month, researchers at Cambridge University became the latest scientists to expose a flaw in the system, when they managed to trick a shop's chip-and-PIN terminal into authorising a payment from a stolen card, despite not knowing its four-digit security code.
Luckily, the rules on compensation for victims of chip-and-PIN fraud have changed recently in victims' favour.
Until last November, banks were allowed to reject refund claims unless their customers could prove they had not negligently disclosed their PINs.
Now, however, the burden of proof has shifted on to the banks themselves: it is up to them to show their customers had, for example, left a note of their PIN lying around for fraudsters to find.
If not, they should immediately make good any losses.
Phishing
If you get an email which asks you to log in to your bank account it is almost definitely a con known as a phishing message, designed to make you disclose your account details on a fake web page.
But some of these messages do look remarkably authentic, and lots of people fall for them.
If you think you have been tricked, let your bank know straight away so they can stop your account being raided. But if you think you have already lost money to a phishing con, you might not get a lot of sympathy from your account provider.
Banks regularly warn about phishing attacks - especially on internet bank log-in pages - and stress that they would never ask customers to log into their accounts via an email.
They could argue that anyone who has failed to heed these warnings has acted negligently, and therefore refuse compensation.
Identity Fraud
If someone impersonates you to obtain credit, you should be able to wipe the debt from your personal credit record.
Unfortunately, doing so can be a long, arduous process.
Criminals can carry out identity fraud with very little personal information - often a name and a previous address can be enough - so it is hard for banks to conclude you have been negligent in allowing your identity to be stolen.
But it can take months to discover your identity has been used by someone else, and then even longer to put matters right.
If this has happened to you, you should report the matter to the police and the lenders involved.
You will also have to contact one of the UK's credit reference agencies to ensure that the loans made fraudulently in your name are wiped from your file, and do not affect your chances of borrowing in the future.
You can also sign up for a service called CIFAS Protective Registration, which means that lenders must undertake extra checks before giving credit to you, or to someone who claims to be you.
What you shouldn't do is pay for ID theft protection. Here at lovemoney.com, we think this sort of cover preys on your fears and you usually don't need it. Read Avoid this expensive rip-off! to find out why.
The last resort
There are rarely hard-and-fast rules about when banks will compensate you for fraud losses. Usually, these crimes are assessed on a case-by-case basis, but if you can show you took reasonable precautions to avoid being a victim of financial crime, you should get your money back.
If your bank refuses to compensate you, all is not lost: you can take your case to the impartial Financial Ombudsman, which should give you a fair hearing.
Finally, don't forget that, if you think you may be the victim of a scam, you can post about it on Q&A to get advice from other lovemoney.com readers.
Check your credit record via lovemoney.com
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This my testimony on how i got my scammed money back from an internet fraudster,through,the help of lostfundcontrol,my name is Delanie i saw a posting on google of someone giving a testimony on her she got her scammed money back from a guy in south africa through the help of controlfundcontrol and i felt compelled to email them,and told them how i was scammed,I'm pretty sure I have been scammed by someone in Nigeria. It all started as a friend request in Facebook which I accepted. He told me he was a building contractor working on a hotel in Nigeria. Within a few weeks of messaging I got a message that the hotel he was staying at was bombed and he lost everything which included his passport, cash, etc. He asked for some money which I sent. Then the company he was working for had lost $80,000 to employees that stole the funds, so they wouldn't be getting a paycheck for awhile. A little time passed and he asked for help to get his passport so he could get out of there and come home back to the states. He claimed that people are corrupt there and even at the American Embassy they were charging him $2,500 for a replacement passport. According to him a crew member of his gave him $200 towards that fee. I sent him some money and he went to the American Embassy to try and pick up his passport. He claims that they told him they needed the full $2,500. So he paid them what he had and was told no more payments he had to pay the balance to pick it up. A little time passed and he asked for some money so he could eat, which I sent. Then he contracted malaria and while he was picking up the money he collapsed and was hospitalized. The money I sent for his passport was sent back from Western Union so I picked it up, but according to him they messed up and he got one of the four transfers. But I got all four of my transfers back. So while he was in the hospital. I resent the money to two of his crew members which were going to pick up his passport. Only one of the two crew members went. He told me that on the way back his crew member was a victim of a suicide bomber and was killed, which meant his passport was destroyed. When he found this out he rushed out of the hospital was involved in an auto accident and was rushed back to the hospital where I then got a message from a Dr. there that his heart had been damaged because of the malaria and he would need surgery. After a few days he asked if I could send money so he could get out of the hospital that they would not release him until he paid something. I asked him why not just leave and he said there were guards at the doors, so I asked if I sent money how would he pick it up and he said a guard would escort him to/from. So I sent some money and he was released from the hospital. So, he went back to work for a week and told me he they had only given him a weeks worth of meds for his heart. I sent more money and he collapsed while picking it up and was hospitalized again. During this time I got a message from the Dr. again saying he needed to have surgery on an artery in his heart or he would die. The guy then sent me a message saying that in order for him to have the surgery they needed money up front. The Dr. then called me a few days later and then asked if I was coming and could I sign some papers because this guy had told them I was his wife. I said no I could not. The Dr. messaged me again and at this point I was angry that they would not treat him and give him the treatment he needed. I went off on the doctor in my message. I got a message from the guy the next day saying I should not have done that, the Dr. was a good guy, that the hospital really needed the money, etc. He was released a couple of days later and went back to work. So then he said an old Army buddy of his was sending him some money to help pay for another passport. He arranged to have the check sent to me which he wanted me to cash and then Western Union him the money. I received the check this week and and the USPS envelope was out of Wisconsin but the check was out of Georgia. Thankfully my bank denied it. I called the bank the check was issued out of and they verified that the account number and holder did not exist,There are other details to my story,but i thank God,that i got all my penny that i was scammed of back from the scammer and he is serving time in jail,all this were made possible through the help of lostfundcontrol,so if have been scammed of your money,all you need do is email lostfundcontrol@gmail.com,to get all your money back from the scammer.
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Don't forget paypal when talking about these scams and frauds. I stupidly signed up for an autorecharge on skype, with payment coming from paypal. Stupid because I had always just added from paypal, and now I have found out the hard way that to avoid fraud, you should ONLY add value through PAYG vouchers (from Sainsbury's). Although my skype account was above the level that skype could ask for money, five times the allowed value was recharged from my paypal account. Again... and again... and again... My bank blocked payments after the second demand via paypal. So it then diverted to my credit card, and another two payments went. Second learning point - never, ever have more than one card or account on paypal. Then the real problem started, you can only contact skype online, and responses are pitifully slow. Paypal said skype had the money. And vice versa. Paypal considered the issue as resolved because of this. Skype said it had never reached them. Skype and paypal would not speak to each other. If you look at the skype bulletin board, you will realise that this happens all the time. I suspect likewise with paypal, indeed, there are some sites which report massive problems. Watch these two organisations - they are outside the UK, and they blame each other. They are private companies and outside banking regulations. The involvement of a third party (paypal) is a bit too complicated for the banks (although M&S have really come up trumps on the credit card). I'm OK now, but it has been seriously stressful trying to follow this through. I've forwarded info to the new UK Fraud organisations - sorry no details but was on radio a couple of weeks ago. They will monitor fraud patterns to prioritise efforts apparently. I'd never heard of this before, but maybe it will help others avoid this fraud. Sorry this is so long.
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Jonnyboy, I think that Wellsprungalice is possibly wrong when (s)he advises that you don't go and visit the address that your post is being sent to in error, should you ever find out. This has happened to me on two occasions, on the first my post was going to an address in ******** PARK rather than ******** Parade where I lived, and I discovered what was happening to my missing bank statements when one misaddressed missive was delivered to my home in the Parade (in spite of the wrong address). It turned out that the neighbour was simply destroying the unwanted post rather than forwarding it on to me aaround the corner... so thereafter whenever I got any of his post delivered to me in error I simply binned it. The other occasion was more sinister. Two chequebooks of mine should have been delivered to 571 ******** Rd., but never appeared. I reckoned that someone hand writing the address down might have linked the 5 and the 7 together and subsequently read it as 511 ******** Rd.. So I went to 511 which was a flooring shop and asked. The result was I recovered one of the chequebooks. The assistant admitted that there had been another one and went and looked for it, but couldn't find it. I had all the cheques in that book cancelled. A few months later someone tried to pass two of the cancelled cheques. So it's worth a try, if you can find out where they've gone, to go and look. If it's an error and not a crook you might get your statements and chequebooks back. If it is an empty property, or a multi-occupied house and there is no trace of the stuff, you're no worse off than you are now.
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16 October 2015