Not upheld: scam - failure to prevent/warn of cryptocurrency investment scam complaint against Bank of Scotland (BoS) plc

Decision detail

Summary

Miss S complained that Bank of Scotland refused to refund money she lost to a scam involving cryptocurrency payments. Between 20-22 September 2025, Miss S made seven payments to a cryptocurrency provider, totalling significant losses, believing she was making legitimate cryptocurrency investments when she was actually victim of a job scam. The ombudsman found that while BoS should have intervened with a scam warning before the seventh payment due to concerning transaction patterns, the intervention would not have prevented the loss because Miss S was deliberately providing false information to BoS as instructed by the scammers. The complaint was not upheld, though BoS's existing refund of 50% of the final payment was deemed fair and reasonable.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman applied the Payment Services Regulations 2017 framework, establishing that Miss S authorised the payments and was presumed liable in the first instance. However, the ombudsman considered whether BoS should have taken additional protective steps. For the first six payments, the ombudsman found they were individually low value and not significantly uncharacteristic of Miss S's spending, so BoS systems would not reasonably have been triggered. For the seventh payment, the ombudsman found BoS should have recognised heightened scam risk due to increasing values and rapid succession of payments to cryptocurrency provider, and should have provided a tailored scam warning. However, the ombudsman concluded that even with better questioning, Miss S would not have been prevented from proceeding because she was under the scammer's influence and deliberately providing false information to BoS as instructed by the scammers. The ombudsman also found BoS could not have recovered funds directly from scammers as the funds were transferred to accounts in Miss S's own name first.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website