Not upheld: failure to prevent investment scam complaint against Metro Bank PLC

Decision detail

Summary

Mr C lost £20,000 to an investment scam after seeing a social media advert for a Swiss-based investment business. He made three transfers from his Metro account and was given access to a trading platform showing false returns. When he tried to withdraw funds, he discovered the scam. Mr C complained that Metro should have done more to prevent him falling victim to the scam. Although the ombudsman agreed Metro should have intervened before the second £7,500 transfer, it found that even if Metro had questioned Mr C, he would not have answered truthfully, as evidenced by his dishonest responses to another bank's questions about a related payment. The ombudsman concluded Metro could not have prevented the losses due to the scammers' overwhelming influence over Mr C and therefore did not uphold the complaint.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

Although Metro should have intervened before processing the second £7,500 transfer due to its size relative to the first transfer and the higher fraud risk of overseas payments, the ombudsman could not safely find that intervention would have prevented the scam. The key evidence was that when another bank questioned Mr C about a related payment, he deliberately provided false information despite being directly asked about investment and urgent money requests. This demonstrated Mr C was heavily influenced by the scammers and would not have answered Metro's questions truthfully either. The ombudsman concluded that the scammers' influence over Mr C was so strong that even a bank intervention would not have been successful in breaking it.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website