Fraud victim slams Lloyds after having £7,000 stolen from his account but the bank REFUSES to repay him
Matthew Bell denies he made the withdrawals from a branch in Worcester in 2015 - and is now planning on taking the bank to court
A FRAUD victim who had £7,000 stolen from his account has slammed Lloyds after the bank refused to refund him.
Matthew Stephen Bell said he was made to feel like a criminal after he had his wallet stolen while at a work conference in 2015 - and is going to take legal action to try and get his money back.
Mr Bell was at the event at a Holiday Inn in Stratford when he noticed his wallet was missing.
Later that afternoon he received two calls from someone claiming to be from Lloyds saying there had been unusual activity on his account and £1,000 had been withdrawn.
The supposed staff member assured him the money would be returned as soon as possible but when he checked his account the following week, he was shocked to discover that a total of £7,100 had been taken - with two withdrawals made at a branch in Worcester.
Whoever had withdrawn the money at the branch had used Mr Bell's pin successfully - leading to the bank to reject his claim on the basis that it must have been him who made the withdrawals.
But Mr Bell, 40, denies that it's him on CCTV footage from the branch and that he has no way of explaining how his pin number was used.
The chartered surveyor said: "It has been unbelievable. I feel they've refused to acknowledge that I was a victim of crime.
"The CCTV footage they've got doesn't look anything like me. They say I was in the Worcester branch but at that time I was at the hotel.
"I was shocked to hear they were claiming it was me on the CCTV.
"They think I must have given my pin out over the phone but there was no way I did that - I've always known not to give it out.
"Whoever did it had my wallet with my driving licence which they could have used as ID."
When Mr Bell first contacted the bank, he was told that he would be refunded all of his money.
But after then rejecting his claim, Mr Bell took his complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), which can settle complaints between customers and financial firms.
But Mr Bell accused the FOS of "colluding" with the banking industry after it failed to find in favour of him - and now he's going to begin legal action to try and get his money back.
Bank Fraud: When your bank won't refund you your money
If you're a victim of fraud, you'd like to think that you'll be able to get your money back. But that's not always the case.
Your bank can only refuse to refund you for an unauthorised payment if:
- It can prove you authorised the transaction
- It can prove you are at fault because you acted frauduelently or failed to properly protect your personal information including card number and pin
- You left it more than 13 months after the date of the transaction to complain
Banks have to prove you authorised the payment - it's not enough for them to say that just because a pin number was used it auotmatically means you carried out the tranaction.
But if it's revealed that you acted with "gross negligence" and failed to protect your information properly, then it can refuse you.
You may also have to pay £50 of the unauthorised amount if your card is lost or stolen.
Victims of online trasnfer scams - there was more than 19,00 victims in the first half of the year - currently have no legal right to get their money back, so be extremely careful you're not paying money to a fraudster online.
"I didn't feel like they were on our side at all," he said.
"It just seemed like there was some collusion between them and the bank.
"The next stage now is to go to court. There's a one-off fee of about £400 to pay but I don't want to let it lie."
Bank scams and fraud has become a huge concern for both consumers and regulators.
TV's Gloria Hunniford was fleeced of £120,000 after a woman pretending to be her walked into a Santander branch in Croydon and nabbed the cash.
In the summer, RBS chief, Ross McEwan provoked outrage when he said victims shouldn't get automatically refunded by their banks if they are scammed out of their money.
Former head of the Met Police, Bernard Hogan-Howe, was slammed for blaming victims of online fraud.
Hogan-Howe claimed that Brits were being "rewarded for bad behaviour" by not following basic security measures online and then be compensated.
Last month, the Payments System Regulator announced it was looking at ways to make it easier for online transfer victims to get their money back.
Under city rules, a bank can only refuse to refund a victim if they can prove the customer acted negligently failed to protect their card and pin details.
A spokeswoman for the bank told The Sun Online it had paid Mr Bell £356 in compensation due to the time it took to investigate his complaint and that he was wrongly told his claim would be repaid in full.
"Lloyds Bank takes its commitment to fraud prevention seriously. Following Mr Bell's complaint we investigated his case thoroughly and the Financial Ombudsman supported our decision," she added.
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A spokeswoman for the Financial Ombudsman Service said: "We resolve complaints on an individual basis, taking into account all the available evidence.
"As such, we are independent of both the consumer and the business who the complaint is against.
"However, I can understand that Mr Bell is disappointed with the outcome of his complaint. As Mr Bell rejected our decision, he is free to pursue his complaint through the courts."
Bank Fraud: What to do if your bank won't give you your money back
Financial fraud cost Brits nearly £770million in 2016. But what can you do if your bank refuses to give your money back?
It can feel like your being punished when you've been scammed of your hard-earned cash and you can't get your money back.
- In the first place, you need to complain to your bank about the unauthorised transactions. It has to investigate your complaint and must give you a clear answer within eight weeks.
- Within this time, the bank may give you an inital response which gives you the chance to go back to them if you're unhappy with their decision, or a final response - which is their last answer.
- Once they have given you a final decision, you can go to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). You can, outlining your complaint or you can call them on 0800 023 4567. Make sure you provide as much information and evidence as you can to support your case.
- At this stage, your complaint will be looked into by a case-worker - how long this takes depends on the complexity of your case - who will make a deicsion based on the law and the evidence both you and the bank have provided.
- If you disagree with their decision, you can ask for a formal decision to be made by one of the actual Ombudsmen. Very few cases reach this stage and their decision is binding on the bank but not you - so you can still take the company to court via the small claims process.
- It can be used to settle claims under £10,000 - you pay an up-front fee of between £25 to £410 to begin your claim online and then between £25 and £325 if your case actually goes to court.
- If you win your case, you get these fees back but you need to think carefully about doing this - how likely is it that a judge is more likely to find in your favour than the FOS?
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