Not upheld: Fraud reimbursement (APP scams) complaint against Santander UK Plc

Decision detail

Summary

Mr J fell victim to a cryptocurrency investment scam after seeing a social media advertisement and was persuaded to make five debit card payments totalling £20,518.16 to his own cryptocurrency account. Santander intervened on some payments and spoke to Mr J about investment scams, but Mr J complained that the bank's questions were unclear and ineffective. The ombudsman found that while some of Santander's questions were poorly phrased, Mr J gave a clearly inaccurate answer to a direct question about whether anyone else had access to his cryptocurrency wallet, and provided incomplete answers to other questions. The ombudsman concluded that further or better intervention would not have prevented the losses, as Mr J's inaccurate responses and the absence of full evidence about his communications with the scammer meant it could not be established that clearer questioning would have uncovered the scam.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that while Santander's questions could have been clearer and more probing, Mr J gave a clearly inaccurate answer to the direct question about whether anyone else had access to his cryptocurrency wallet. The question was unambiguous, yet Mr J denied third-party access despite later admitting the scammer made withdrawals from his accounts. This inaccuracy, combined with incomplete answers to other questions and the absence of full evidence about communications with the scammer, meant the ombudsman could not conclude that better intervention would more likely than not have prevented the losses. The ombudsman noted Mr J did not give persuasive reasons for his inaccurate answer and that it raised doubt about whether poor question phrasing or deliberate concealment was responsible for the incomplete information provided.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website