Santander bank refuses to refund three customers who lost thousands from text message scam
The Santander customers lost between £9,000 and £15,000 each
SANTANDER customers are being warned of a new text message scam that could leave them thousands of pounds out of pocket.
The scam has caused a handful of customers to lose between up to £15,000 - and Santander has refused to cough up the cash to refund the victims.
The scam, known as "smishing", involves the fraudster sending out text messages to victims pretending to be from their bank.
The criminal is able to use a technique called number spoofing in which they replace the original mobile number of the bank with one with alphanumeric text.
Customers who receive these messages believe them to be genuinely from the bank.
Santander customers Ruth Quinn, Ron Williams and Rod Owens told the that they had fallen victim to the scam, and had lost £15,000, £12,000 and £9,200 respectively to fraudsters.
In another case reported by the the financial website earlier in the year, a Santander customer lost £23,000 to the very same scam.
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The fake messages involved in this scam typically say that there has been unusual activity on the customer's account and that they need to call the number or visit the website link provided in the text message.
In a panic, victims do as instructed and end up handing over financial details to the criminals.
They are also convinced into giving access to their online banking by generating a one-time password (OTP), where the fraudsters then access their accounts and steal their savings.
Much to the customers' despair, Santander has refused to refund each of the three victims on the grounds that they freely handed over their financial information - despite the fact that the text messages were extremely convincing.
Top tips to protect yourself from scams
- NEVER give out personal or financial information on the phone or by email. Your bank, the police or any other organisation will never ask you for these in full.
- Never allow someone remote access to your computer following a cold call
- Don’t rely on caller ID – numbers can be spoofed by fraudsters to make it look like they’re calling from a trusted number
- Your bank, the police or any other company, will never call to ask you to transfer your money out of your account for security reasons
- Be wary of all cold calls claiming to be from banks, police, or other trusted organisations – if you have any concerns, call back on an independently verified number
- If you have fallen victim to a scam, call Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040
In a letter to one customer, who lost £9,200, the bank said: "We have come to the decision to decline your fraud claim.
"You have given a 3rd party your security details from your online banking. The disputed transactions have been authorised using our OTP service.
"A text message was sent to your registered mobile phone number and entered correctly into online banking to authorise the transactions.
"For this reason we are unable to reimburse your account in full. However, due to the transactions taking place inside your overdraft, we have agreed to reimburse the amount of £1,500."
A spokesperson for Santander said: “Each of the customers cited in the Mail Online article provided the fraudsters with their OTPs and allowed the fraudsters access to their online banking.
"Whilst we are very sympathetic to customers who are victims of scams, as there was no Santander error and all three customers divulged personal, security information, we therefore cannot accept any responsibility for the losses on these accounts."
Recent data from the banking industry body Financial Fraud Action UK, shows that banks and financial firms are still failing to combat the growing threat of fraud in Britain.
Official figures show that the overall scale of financial fraud in 2016 was £768.8million, up from the £755million lost in 2015.
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