Not upheld: authorised push payment (APP) scam - refund claim complaint against Lloyds Bank PLC

Decision detail

Summary

Mr D complained that Lloyds Bank should refund £2,568.94 he lost to an alleged investment scam orchestrated by someone he knew from childhood via social media. The scammer used fabricated trading success evidence and social pressure to convince Mr D to make 11 payments between December 2023 and May 2024. Mr D did not realise he had been scammed until October 2025. The ombudsman found insufficient evidence that payment 1 (covered by the CRM Code) was made to a scammer, and determined that Lloyds had no reasonable basis to intervene on payments 2-11 (made by debit card) as they were not unusual in amount, frequency, or pattern. The complaint was not upheld.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found insufficient evidence that payment 1 was made to a scammer despite circumstantial connections to the FCA warning. While the payee names bore similarities to the FCA warning, there was no clear evidence that Mr D interacted with the specific social media handles or websites named in the warning. For payments 2-11, even accepting they were scam-related, the ombudsman found Lloyds had no reasonable basis to intervene as the payments were not unusual in amount, frequency, or pattern. The payments were spread over three months to different recipients, and the account holder frequently used overdrafts and made overseas payments. The fact that one payment was disputed and refunded did not create an obligation to block subsequent payments to the same merchant.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website