Not upheld: Fraud reimbursement (APP scams) complaint against Revolut Ltd

Decision detail

Summary

Mrs W lost £8,000 to an investment scam after being persuaded to open a Revolut account and transfer funds to a cryptocurrency wallet. She had previously been warned by another bank (S) that she was being scammed, but when S blocked her payments, she transferred funds to Revolut instead. Revolut issued only a generic warning and did not prevent the payment. The ombudsman found Revolut's intervention was inadequate but concluded that better intervention would likely not have prevented the loss, given Mrs W's demonstrated willingness to deceive fraud detection systems and the scammer's heavy influence over her actions. The complaint was not upheld.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that while Revolut should have issued a better automated warning specific to cryptocurrency scam risks rather than a generic warning, on balance of probabilities such intervention would not have prevented Mrs W's loss. This conclusion was based on: (1) Mrs W's demonstrated pattern of hiding the true purpose of payments when challenged by fraud detection systems (as evidenced by her interaction with S); (2) the scammer's heavy coaching of Mrs W throughout the process; (3) Mrs W's propensity to switch to alternative accounts when blocked; and (4) insufficient evidence that Mrs W's past medical condition impaired her decision-making at the time of the scam. The ombudsman rejected the argument that considering S's interventions was speculative, finding such interactions a fair indicator of Mrs W's state of mind and likely behaviour in similar circumstances.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website