Not upheld: failure to intervene in authorised push payment scam (romance and investment scam) complaint against MONZO BANK LIMITED

Decision detail

Summary

Mr H complained that Monzo unfairly refused to refund payments he made as part of a romance and investment scam. Between September and December 2024, Mr H made four payments totalling £9,978.37 from his Monzo account to his own cryptocurrency account, which he then transferred to a fraudulent investment platform. Mr H was initially able to withdraw a small profit of $200, which made the scam appear legitimate, but later encountered difficulties withdrawing funds and was asked to pay fees and taxes. Monzo warned Mr H on 23 January 2025 that he was being scammed, but Mr H remained sceptical and made further payments from another bank account. The ombudsman found that while Monzo should have intervened with enhanced automated warnings on the first payment, such intervention would not have prevented Mr H's losses given his deep emotional and financial investment in the scam and his demonstrated resistance to warnings.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

While Monzo should have intervened with an enhanced automated warning on the first payment due to risk factors (new account, significant payment amount, cryptocurrency platform), the ombudsman concluded that such intervention would not have prevented Mr H's losses. The key reasoning was that Mr H remained deeply influenced by the scammer despite receiving a very clear, direct warning from Monzo in January 2025 delivered during a phone call, after which he still made further payments from another bank. This demonstrated that Mr H would have been unlikely to heed an automated warning in September 2024 when he had fewer reasons to suspect a scam (he had successfully withdrawn $200 in profits and found no negative information about the platform). The ombudsman also noted that Mr H's refusal to share information about how he discovered the investment in January 2025, even after clear warning signs were present, suggested he would not have engaged with Monzo's questions in September 2024 when warning signs were absent.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website