Not upheld: Fraud reimbursement (APP scams) complaint against National Westminster Bank Public Limited Company (trading as Ulster Bank)

Decision detail

Summary

Ms W lost over £200,000 to a romance scam after befriending someone in a bereavement chatroom following the loss of two family members. The scammer requested money ostensibly for living expenses abroad, instructing Ms W to use cryptocurrency and later to transfer funds through her own account at provider R. Over five months, Ms W made over 60 payments to R, which were then converted to cryptocurrency. Ulster Bank declined to refund the losses, arguing the payments were authorised transfers to Ms W's own account. The ombudsman found that while Ulster Bank should have questioned the suspicious pattern of £10,000 chunk transfers in May 2025, the bank could not reasonably have prevented the loss as Ms W had been coached to conceal the scam and would have provided a plausible investment explanation.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

While Ulster Bank should have intervened in May 2025 when the pattern of transferring a large sum in small £10,000 chunks appeared designed to evade fraud controls and bore hallmarks of multi-stage fraud, the ombudsman was not persuaded that such intervention would have uncovered the scam. Ms W had been coached by the scammer to conceal the true circumstances, was able to persuade provider R of her legitimacy when questioned, and would likely have provided a plausible explanation (investment) that would not have raised sufficient concern. The bank lacked information about the ultimate destination of funds and Ms W's vulnerability, and she would not have voluntarily disclosed the scam details during a fraud intervention.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website