Not upheld: scam - investment fraud, inadequate intervention on suspicious payments complaint against Barclays Bank UK PLC

Decision detail

Summary

Mr C fell victim to a cryptocurrency investment scam in October 2024 and made three payments totalling £36,250 from his Barclays account to a cryptocurrency wallet between November 7-22, 2024. A fourth payment of £15,000 was intercepted by Barclays on 27 November 2024, when a fraud specialist unveiled the scam. Despite this intervention, Mr C made another payment from his account with bank N, which refunded him. Barclays refused to refund Mr C's losses. The ombudsman found that while Barclays should have intervened more thoroughly on the earlier payments by questioning Mr C's implausible cover story about a savings account, the evidence showed Mr C was so emotionally controlled by the scammer that he would have continued making payments regardless, having already borrowed extensively, received warnings from the cryptocurrency provider, and made further payments even after Barclays' explicit fraud warning.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

While Barclays should have questioned Mr C's implausible cover story during earlier interventions and identified the cryptocurrency exchange destination, the ombudsman found that Mr C was so deeply under the scammer's emotional control that he would have continued making payments regardless of earlier intervention. Mr C had already borrowed extensively and made payments from another bank before his first Barclays payment, was warned by C about scam activity but continued anyway, held concerns about the scam from 29 October but still gave misleading answers to banks, and even after receiving unequivocal advice from Barclays' fraud specialist on 27 November, he made another payment from his other bank account. The evidence strongly suggests Mr C would have found alternative ways to send funds to the scammer.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website