Not upheld: investment scam - failure to prevent fraud complaint against Barclays Bank UK PLC

Decision detail

Summary

Mr K lost over £25,000 to an investment scam after being approached on social media by a scammer offering forex trading opportunities. Between November 2024 and January 2025, he made multiple debit card payments from his Barclays account routed through cryptocurrency wallets and electronic money institutions. Although the ombudsman found Barclays should have intervened on the fifth payment due to a significant spending increase, the complaint was not upheld because evidence showed Mr K deliberately provided misleading information to other payment service providers' fraud interventions, continued sending funds after being explicitly told by another provider that his withdrawals were going to a scam, and was under such powerful emotional influence from the scammer that he would not have heeded bank warnings. The ombudsman concluded that even proportionate intervention from Barclays would likely have resulted in the same outcome as interventions from other financial institutions.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman concluded that while Barclays should have intervened with a better automated warning on payment five due to the significant spending increase and Mr K's prior cryptocurrency activity, such intervention would not have prevented the losses. This conclusion was based on evidence that Mr K deliberately provided misleading information to other payment service providers' fraud interventions, continued sending funds after being explicitly told by another provider that his withdrawals were going to a scam, and demonstrated an extremely powerful emotional hold by the scammer that made him unlikely to challenge instructions. The ombudsman found that Mr K's naivety, combined with his romantic interest in the scammer and his deliberate deception of financial institutions, meant that even a proportionate Barclays intervention would likely have resulted in the same outcome as the interventions from R and W.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website