Desperately hope someone can help us.

For context, youngest son is 19 and working on a govt apprenticeship scheme, so earning £794 per month for a 50hr week, and he works really hard. He suffers from dyspraxia so is immature for his age, absolutely trusting of everyone, not street smart at all but lovely guy. Typically he asks us for the OK to do anything, spend anything. He has never spent his wages, and is a keen saver.

Somehow he got contacted on Instagram by a (supposed) Foreign exchange guru, who has quickly persuaded him to chat via Whatsapp. Incredibly, he’s managed to buy Bitcoin on 4 occasions and transferred each wallet to seemingly spurious sites. This is all new to me but I gather that means the money is gone and untraceable. It’s a few £000 … all of his earnings.

I’ve contacted the ‘broker’ (based in USA) who has flatly refused to refund any money until more money is sent!

Now I appreciate my son is not blameless, but he is very naive and trusting. The broker has also been very persuasive and pushy. A good friend who is in the City has looked at the dealings, and says 100% it’s a scam. We have the broker’s Whatsapp number, Instagram and that is it – no other details.

Is there anything we can do to recover any money, and/or to prevent anyone else getting caught. I feel so sorry for my son as he works so hard, for very little money, and it’s all disappeared in a flash.

Thanks

Has he been scammed ? Illegally?

If not it’s going to be a hard push to get anyone to do anything.
If it’s been illegal then persue it through legal means. Possibly with the help of his bank ?

How did he pay?
I’m not sure he has brought any crypto probably just sent money to a bogus exchange.
Has he got a wallet address for his crypto? exchange log in details ect?

Has he got a wallet address for his crypto? exchange log in details ect?

He probably doesn’t even have a wallet, I suspect he just transferred money from his bank account to the fraudsters thinking he was paying into one.

I suspect nothing you can do as the other end of outside the UK and he transferred the money of his own accord.

How was the money transferred? If credit/debit card you may be able to dispute the transaction. The banks are bust blocking bitcoin exchanges at the moment at the request of the FCA.

Report to the FTC in the USA – link

Not sure what can be done but try Action Fraud to pass over the details of accounts and where the money went… they may use these bits of info to help a bigger case or shut something down so others don’t suffer the same misfortune.

Hi all, thanks. OK, he has paid the money direct from his Starling bank account.

I don’t understand Bitcoin/wallets but I think you’re right that he probably hasn’t bought any actual Bitcoin, as I gather that’s quite tricky to do.

When he’s home from work, we’ll get his bank account up and post details.

And will register this with FTC.

Thanks again

If he’s sent Bitcoin it’s gone and there’s nothing that can be done.

I don’t know if he’s really bought any bitcoin or just transferred his money to someone unscrupulous, but it sounds very similar to the circumstances here – in which case you may be able to recoup the funds if his bank didn’t red flag the repeated transactions and question them? Emptying your account when you usually spend nothing should trigger a warning I think.

https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/what-to-do-if-you-re-the-victim-of-a-bank-transfer-app-scam-aED6A0l529rc

I’m afraid there’s next to zero chance of getting money back from the scammer. I’d bet they’re not really in the US.

Speak to Starling, they might be able to help, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope.

Hannah … that looks slightly hopeful. Will pursue with Starling Bank when he gets home.

Is there any recourse / helpful that

– he’s got dyspraxia
– his funds in his bank account went from c.£8000 (highest its ever been) to £50 in the course of 3 days (3 payments), when his typical spending pattern is £100-200 per month for the previous 24months?

And I appreciate he did this all voluntarily 🙁

Sadly it doesn’t sound like you’ve got any chance of recovering the money – police in this country will be hampered by it being cross-border (and in reality the costs of investigating wouldn’t be worth it given the low likelihood of a conviction). Worth reporting to Action Fraud in this country but unless they get a lot of similar reports they probably wouldn’t do much either (and it would be more taking down Facebook sites etc. – they wouldn’t recover the money for you).

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And I appreciate he did this all voluntarily 🙁

Nobody gets scammed voluntarily.

Hopefully the bank will step up for him

Is there any recourse / helpful that

– he’s got dyspraxia
– his funds in his bank account went from c.£8000 (highest its ever been) to £50 in the course of 3 days (3 payments), when his typical spending pattern is £100-200 per month for the previous 24months?

The rules around spotting suspicious activity on accounts and a bank’s responsibility have changed a lot in the last year or two. I’d suspect you may have an argument that your son being in a vulnerable group with his dyspraxia means the bank should have been more suspicious but that may depend on whether they were aware of it. I would be pushing the bank for an answer about why it wasn’t flagged but also get yourself over to the Money Saving Expert forums, it’s full of incredibly helpful and knowledgeable people who can cut through the rumours and get you in the right direction.

My wife got scammed in a slightly different way – when I heard how it happened I was gob smacked my wife went along with it. She basically authorised funds to be paid away vi online banking. I had to bite my tongue a bit on it – if I were the bank I’d say she breached all their warnings about fraud and t&cs when you sign up to online banking.

However, they actually bit the bullet and refunded her all of the money even though they only managed to block about 1/8th of it being paid away. Fair play for that – was HSBC.

So you may get lucky if Starling follow a similar policy. Given they’re a start up bank with no old legacy systems to hinder them they ought to be better at flagging / blocking this sort of thing really.

FYI – check with your son ASAP on how the funds were sent. If he willingly sent them that’s one thing – if they somehow have access to his online banking and they scammed him to get the codes to pay away then make sure the online banking is completely reset so they have no access to initiate payments / see how much he has in there.

The rules around spotting suspicious activity on accounts and a bank’s responsibility have changed a lot in the last year or two

Barclays ‘solution’ is to pop up an ‘Is this a scam?’ notification every time I do anything on their App, including paying £20 to the milkman, who I’ve being paying by bank transfer for years. The daft thing is, it pops up before you’ve entered any details, so clicking ‘OK’ and ignoring it just becomes automated behaviour. It would be much better is it waited till you’d entered the details eg the amount and then showed a warning if it looked suspicious or was above a certain amount, or a new account etc etc.

I’d say you have pretty much zero chance unfortunately.

I recovered a significant amount of money from a bank who I won’t name after my terminally ill mother was scammed (not bitcoin). My advice is that you escalate as high as you can up the customer services tree and make a real point about your sons vulnerability. You will be told “no” many times but keep fighting. Action fraud and the police will sit drinking from their chocolate teapot.

In my case it took multiple phone calls and a letter to the CEO. Suddenly they changed their minds, refunded and gave us compensation. Mum ended up quids in from being scammed. I repeat that you must never give up but equally must always be super polite and try and get them to sympathise.

I wish you all the best as this was a torrid time for me and my family. The scammers have arrest warrants out for them now but it’s taken nearly 2 years

She basically authorised funds to be paid away vi online banking

That is how nearly all scams work, they just persuade the person to give away all their money (APP – Authorised Push Payment fraud). They’re very good at it as well, eg all sorts of white collar professionals fall for it.

https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/what-to-do-if-you-re-the-victim-of-a-bank-transfer-app-scam-aED6A0l529rc

I think maybe “bitcoin” is a red herring here. If he’s actually bought bitcoin then it’s not really a scam, he’s bought bitcoin and can sell it again. If on the other hand he’s received nothing whatsoever for his money then the scam is “my son was tricked into giving someone money” and it doesn’t really matter whether the bait was bitcoin or two dozen boxes of frozen sausages and a freshly mown lawn.

Where I’m going with this is, if you present it as a ‘bitcoin scam’ then it might scare off or confuse people who may otherwise be able to deal with it. What it sounds more like to me is a confidence scam.

Agree with all above. I would only add that the more people who hassle the banks and teh faster you hassle the bank the quicker theuy are at taking these people down.

I would think your suspicion is correct and they have not bought anything. They have just made a payment or a transfer of funds to another account. That account is most likely live and active and the sooner you can get on it the sooner that it will get blocked / flagged for fraud.

If your son’s been tricked into giving someone all his money. Contact the bank and speak to them about it. You’ve got to be persistent and reinforce the message to them that your son is vulnerable from this sort of scam. keep at them, write to as high up a person as you can..

so clicking ‘OK’ and ignoring it just becomes automated behaviour. It would be much better is it waited till you’d entered the details eg the amount and then showed a warning if it looked suspicious or was above a certain amount, or a new account etc etc.

RBS does it in the other order, and you actually have to pick why you are sending it (e.g. gift, payment etc) – still becomes a bit automatic. I agree it would be better if there was some sort of risk scoring that made the behaviour change depending on where/what/how you were sending etc.

Barclays ‘solution’ is to pop up an ‘Is this a scam?’ notification every time I do anything on their App, including paying £20 to the milkman, who I’ve being paying by bank transfer for years. The daft thing is, it pops up before you’ve entered any details, so clicking ‘OK’ and ignoring it just becomes automated behaviour. It would be much better is it waited till you’d entered the details eg the amount and then showed a warning if it looked suspicious or was above a certain amount, or a new account etc etc.

Nationwide have one on the screen you set up a payment on and a further one where you confirm they’re correct. They occasionally change the layout and wording too so that it doesn’t become overly familiar and you just click through anyway. They also make it larger and more to-the-point if you make payments to the same account multiple times in quick succession, I only found that out when I made 3 payments to my credit card over 2 days which made me smile. They were essentially trying to warn me that them asking me to pay off their credit card might be a scam!

Thanks again. I’m going through his emails (with his permission) and looks like he’s used several crypto sites, unless of course, these are all dodgy. However, the sites, and clicking through on his transaction id looks pretty convincing to my uneducated eye.

I think approaching Starling might be good as he’s, within the last 2 weeks, set up Swift payments for decent sums (e.g. USD $2500) which he’s never done before, and made payments to Crypto.com, Blockchain, Coinmama and Moonpay.

Without wanting to put him down, I’d be staggered if/that he’s managed to organise Swift payments, deal with a (dodgy) broker, buy bits of Bitcoin, transfer wallet etc. He often struggles with fairly day-to-day stuff, and usually needs a confidence boost to ‘do’ something, esp if new or seemingly complicated.

Without wanting to put him down, I’d be staggered if/that he’s managed to organise Swift payments, deal with a (dodgy) broker, buy bits of Bitcoin, transfer wallet etc.

A very friendly and enthusiastic scam artist will have talked him through it all, making him feel successful and on his way to making a fortune etc. He’ll have given all the time necessary to helping him get it right. They do it for a living and are very good at it.

Without wanting to put him down, I’d be staggered if/that he’s managed to organise Swift payments, deal with a (dodgy) broker, buy bits of Bitcoin, transfer wallet etc. He often struggles with fairly day-to-day stuff, and usually needs a confidence boost to ‘do’ something, esp if new or seemingly complicated.

Do you know if he gave the scammer remote access to his computer/phone then? If he struggles to do some day-to-day stuff then maybe he did and if that is the case then be wary of using it as it may well have malware on it.

NB If all else fails, I’d write to the Sunday Times Money section, they are always championing fraud victims aganst the banks and have a good track record of embarrassing banks into refunding victims of push payment fraud.

Thanks again all, feeling pretty shocked by all that’s gone on.

So when son’s home, we’ll talk to the bank. His recent spending activity is massively different to his historical spend.

My understanding is that “Cheryl (his broker)” offered to trade crypto currencies on his behalf and offered him fabulous returns. He then transferred money to her via a Bitcoin wallet so he would have deposited funds into one of the crypto exchange apps which then converts his £ to Bitcoin which he then transferred to her. She then said that she had set up a trading account in his name and sent him daily emails showing how much money she had made for him as well as demanding more money along the way (“i forgot to tell you that there is an additional fee” etc). The problem is anyone can set up a wallet to receive Jake’s bitcoins. I may be wrong but I think he has bought bitcoin but only so that he can transfer it to her and then she’s just pocketed it and asked for more. She pretended to work for Bitgo which is a legislate company but they only trade crypto for institutional investors as far as I’m aware (e.g. asset managers, pension funds etc).

Barclays ‘solution’ is to pop up an ‘Is this a scam?’ notification every time I do anything on their App, including paying £20 to the milkman, who I’ve being paying by bank transfer for years. The daft thing is, it pops up before you’ve entered any details, so clicking ‘OK’ and ignoring it just becomes automated behaviour. It would be much better is it waited till you’d entered the details eg the amount and then showed a warning if it looked suspicious or was above a certain amount, or a new account etc etc.

The difficulty is – from the bank’s point of view that warning always needs to be there but from the the customer’s point of view it always being there means you cease to notice it. But also, of course, someone who is being scammed doesnt think they are being scammed – so the answer to ‘is this a scam’ is of course ‘no’.

But I’m also surprised the bank didn’t see this as suspicious activity  – even with my business account which frequently has transactions in the 10s of 1000s would see multiple transactions to the same recipient as suspicious and halt the transaction until they had further verification.  In fact a couple of days ago that happened even though the recipient for the transactions was…. me.

I wonder if in the OP’s case the money being taken in more than one transaction was to keep the individual totals under an amount that the bank would be moved to intervene.

Form the OP’s position theres several courses of action – one is making sure its reported to the relevant authorities including whatever service providers (social media co or whatever) that  facilitated the targeting of the fraud, one is notifying and pursuing it with the bank – but another is checking through things like you’re household insurance – this is theft and you have insurance against things being stolen so check whether this situation falls within the scope of any policies you have.

A friend had a similar scam (not bitcoin but it did add up to about £15000) happen to their daughter and when she spoke to the bank about the issue and explained that her daughter had reasoning issues and was immature for her age++ the bank put some sort of notice on her account to prevent future incidents (if there is a transaction that looks out of the normal).
They also refunded the money …..

Haven’t read all of this, but if you haven’t already opened a case with the bank, do so ASAP.

They do it for a living and are very good at it.

Indeed  – you’ve outlined your son’s particular vulnerabilities but the reality is any of us could find ourselves in a situation like this.

Thanks again all, feeling pretty shocked by all that’s gone on.

So when son’s home, we’ll talk to the bank. His recent spending activity is massively different to his historical spend.

My understanding is that “Cheryl (his broker)” offered to trade crypto currencies on his behalf and offered him fabulous returns. He then transferred money to her via a Bitcoin wallet so he would have deposited funds into one of the crypto exchange apps which then converts his £ to Bitcoin which he then transferred to her.

I think unfortunately that will make it impossible to guilt the bank into refunding it.

They’ve transferred it, and he’s received the bitcoins (or fractions of) and he’s then given the bitcoins to someone else. But as far as the initial transaction with his bank is concerned he’s not been defrauded?

I doubt the wallets will be even remotely interested.

I think unfortunately that will make it impossible to guilt the bank into refunding it.

No, there is a voluntary code where banks refund victims of APP fraud. IIRC Natwest is best, refunding something like 95%.

https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/press/press-releases/app-scams-voluntary-code-seven-launch

Ok so all he has done give his cash to a con artist just like buying London bridge.
Don’t let him get too down over it they are very good at stealing money. Forgot the Nigerian prince emails we all sneer at they are professional thiefs.

Banks will pass you off as #he did not carry out due diligence#
But don’t let them if your son has issues. Make them look at his historical spend.

A doctor friend of mine bank transferred 13k for a t5 camper that was just photo on ebay he lost the lot and I know a young co worker who is a social wallflower that got sucked into giving a cam girl Amazon gift cards. Don’t let your son feel guilty they are very good at their job on praying on people .

No, there is a voluntary code where banks refund victims of APP fraud. IIRC Natwest is best, refunding something like 95%.

I’ve read that and I don’t think you’re right (feel free to point out the specific bit if I’ve missed it).

The banks transferred his money to the coin exchange or whoever, and in return they’ve given him bitcoins.

He’s then sent those bitcoins to the fraudster.

Surely the whole point of that fraud is that the bank has no interaction with the fraudster and therefore can’t claw it back.

Like transfering money from the bank to a roofer to re-do the flashing. Then someone stealing the lead off your roof.

Edit “ish” have you got actual crypto addresses then?
Something like 1BvBMSEYstWetqTFn5Au4m4GFg7xJaNVN2.

If you have copy it into here https://www.blockchain.com/explorer
I’ve not used that site for checking coin address but you could try it

@Aus I know people who got scammed out of everything and got it all back under the APP. Just make sure you pursue it with the bank – don’t make the judgement yourself (or let your son make it) that he got tricked. That’s the point – the bank is supposed to put measures in place to protect people from getting tricked. Multiple large transfers that are out of character being allowed to go through suggests that those measures aren’t in place/adequate. Being tricked doesn’t mean you’re stupid – it just means the scammers knew exactly what they were doing and how to be convincing. Good luck, it’s a horrible situation.