Not upheld: scam reimbursement - investment fraud complaint against Lloyds Bank PLC

Decision detail

Summary

Mr O complained that Lloyds Bank failed to reimburse approximately £90,000 he lost to an investment scam with company H between June 2021 and May 2022, conducted through a cryptocurrency wallet. Lloyds declined reimbursement under the CRM Code, stating the payments were not unusual and Mr O had not done enough to verify the investment. The ombudsman found the complaint not upheld because Mr O's testimony was inconsistent (changing which payments were included in the complaint and failing to initially disclose all returns), the evidence did not clearly link all cryptocurrency purchases to H, and the significant returns and conversions back to GBP raised questions about whether some activity was genuine trading rather than scam-related, making it impossible to determine the actual loss.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman could not safely determine Mr O's actual loss due to inconsistencies in his testimony, incomplete evidence of the scam, and failure to initially disclose all returns. Mr O changed his account of which payments were part of the complaint, did not mention £3,484.91 in returns when initially asked, and provided incomplete evidence linking all cryptocurrency purchases to H. The significant returns over the period and conversion back to GBP raised questions about whether some activity was genuine crypto trading rather than scam-related.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website