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.

Sounds unnecessarily complex to me, if I was a fraudster I’d direct my ‘clients’ to a cloned website which looks like a real one but is just a sham. They then buy / transfer whatever when really they’re just transferring the money to an account I control. 5 mins later the money is transferered off to a range of different accounts / bank etc.

Buying real bitcoins and transfering them via an exchange would all be tracable (to a BC address), so leaving an unnecessary paper trail.

I don’t think the actual details matter, it was APP fraud, he fell for it and the bank won’t get any money back as it’s long gone through half a dozen accounts around the world. Given his issues, he should qualify for a refund.

If the bank declines to refund, I’d target every newspaper finance agony aunt out there. If one of them takes it up, the bank will refund just for the publicity. Story like this every week in the Sunday Times Money section.

NB vulnerable teenagers are often groomed to act as mules, they receive the money, withdraw it as cash and give it to the fraudsters (in exhchange for a small cut).

Again, thank you all. This where STW is brilliant, really appreciate the practical pointers and the support.

We’ve been on a long call with the bank, so that’s underway. And re Hannah’s point, we’ll push.

We’re working through all the other bits. Thankfully son is doing well, probably I’m more gutted.

As @stwhannah said, your son needs to contact his banks fraud team ASAP. it might be recoverable, it might not be.

The bit coin bubble burst years ago, but there’s loads of stuff on social; about investihng in it, and people simply stealing money.

It’s like the new version of ponzi schemes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme

Good Luck. Sounds like your son is ambitious to make money and do well.

Really hope you he gets his money back. & well done all for the good advice.

Just to reiterate that if this was multiple out of the ordinary payments the bank should have stopped them. I bought a motorbike earlier this Yr, made a test payment to the seller of £100 as deposit, when I came to pay the few £k balance the next day, bank wouldn’t let it through without referring to their anti fraud dept.

it might be recoverable, it might not be.

Not a hope, within 30 secs of his money being transferred it will have zoomed off to half a dozen different accounts with different banks. It’s a well tested and understood method, happens to 100s of people every single day.

Thankfully son is doing well, probably I’m more gutted.

To be honest, he’ll have learnt a valuable lesson from this. I know it’s little consolation but this sort of thing happens to pensioners who then loose everything they have and no chance to earn anymore money etc. At least he’s young enough to bounce back and may yet get it all refunded.

footflaps

Not a hope, within 30 secs of his money being transferred it will have zoomed off to half a dozen different accounts with different banks.

I know it’s little consolation but this sort of thing happens to pensioners who then loose everything they have and no chance to earn anymore money etc.

The Mum of a friend of mine was scammed out of £17k which was withdrawn from her account & while it was massively stressful she got it all back without a great deal of bother.
I wouldn’t write it off just yet.

We are seeing the frequency of banks refunding customers who get scammed is steadily increasing. Including when the bank has not (as far as we can tell) been at fault. Anecdotal I know, but definitely trending that way in our small part of the scamming world. So worth pushing the bank.

It’s frightening how good some of these scammers are. And next to impossible to recover the money or trace the culprits.

The regulator (and ombudsman) are very keen that banks spot events (transfers) that are not “normal” for the account. I’ve seen some cases ruled on by FOS where old dude transfers money out by going in branch; then repeats the transaction for the following 3 days.

That bank was held accountable for the 3 payments but not the first. The clerk who processed the first transfer did ask about where it was going and was satisfied by the customer’s story… but the clerk for the following days should have spotted the pattern and prevented further payments.

Is the bank aware he might be considered as vulnerable? I’d be pushing back on the bank massively.

Friend of a friends elderly parents went in to their bank and got the bank staff to help them transfer the money (thousands) to the police to help with a police investigation. The daughters were persistent and the bank eventually refunded the money. I think the bank was swayed by the fact that a member of their team helped transfer the money, but it is another example of the fact that this is not a hopeless case. Good luck!

Real sorry to hear your son got caught up in a scam. They’re absolutely rife right now.

Just to clear up as I saw some people under the impression it’s hard to buy bitcoin – it’s very simple to buy bitcoin these days. Even simpler to send it to someone. You can do it in a matter of about 6/7 taps on the Coinbase app. You just pay via debit card, all from your phone just like buying something from Amazon.

The Bitcoin in the scam makes it hard to recover and trace your money – your ££ goes to the exchange, who aren’t part of the scam. They’ve just exchanged your £ for BTC. Then they send your BTC to whomever you tell them too.

Your best bet, as said a few times already, is to report to your bank and ActionFraud.

Sounds unnecessarily complex to me, if I was a fraudster I’d direct my ‘clients’ to a cloned website which looks like a real one but is just a sham. They then buy / transfer whatever when really they’re just transferring the money to an account I control. 5 mins later the money is transferered off to a range of different accounts / bank etc.
………………..

the bank won’t get any money back as it’s long gone through half a dozen accounts around the world. Given his issues, he should qualify for a refund.

Surely that’s the whole point.

The bank made a legitimate transfer to wherever it is you buy bitcoins from. Nothing suspicious about that, lots of people, unfortunately, buy and sell cryptocurrency. If the bank does refund him then I’m happy for him, but I can’t see how they’re legally or morally obliged to do so. They didn’t transfer any money to the fraudster. Like any other product, I can’t see how the bank has a responsibility for what he then does with it. They don’t for example insure my bikes just because I bought them with my debit cards.

The OP’s son then made a transfer of that bitcoin to someone else. The coin exchanges, wallets etc that form the “banks” for cryptocurrencies aren’t regulated like retail banks are, so there’s absolutely zero chance of convincing them to reverse the payment, even if you can see where the money is now on the blockchain which is probably just another anonymous wallet, that’s kinda the point, unless you can figure out some real-world transactions related to that wallet it’s just a load of encrypted gibberish.

If the fraudster had got him to transfer the funds directly then I’d absolutely agree that there was a chance of that beig reversed or at least a paper trail that could be followed.

There’s been examples of similar scams where people have been convinced to buy things like thousands of pounds of amazon gift cards then send the redemtion codes to fraudsters. They’re equally valuable on the black market amongst criminals as they’re easy to transfer.

If ive understood correctly, the scammer persuaded your son to buy Bitcoin, and then as a separate transaction those bitcoin wallets were sent to the scammer?
Assuming thats correct:
Unfortunately, there is nothing scammy about buying bitcoin. That half of the transaction is isolated. What he did with his shiny new bitcoin is up to him, so there is no recourse. Its part of the scam, effectively laundering the transaction?

a couple of grand being taken by the account holder isnt going to flag a warning to a bank. He couldve been buying anything with his new income a first car, a new bike?

Life lesson. Chalk it up and move on.

Update – we’re struggling to really know if he’s actually bought Bitcoin or if it’s a front. Because a lot was done on whatsapp/Instagram and now has disappeared, the ‘trail’ isn’t too good, and son, bless him, is just pretty confused.

However, we’ve had a long first chat with the bank, and they’ve responded v quickly in getting their fraud team on it and we’re now having to provide some detail. No idea if that’s hopeful, but they’ve been v empathetic to him and me, so credit to them for that.

And fully agree that son was the one who made the decision to transfer funds. The one oddity to me, is that his bank account (which is 3 years old) has very regualr monthly transactions, totalling on average £120, primarily local shops of Costa (his work lunch!), the Co-Op … and that’s about it. He lives a pretty quiet life. So to suddenly have multiple sums, and some large e.g. £2522 being paid to Crypto is unusual for him. But lesson certainly being learned!

Unfortunately, there is nothing scammy about buying bitcoin.

Theres nothing scammy about buying sandwiches but if I trick or coerce someone into buying me a sandwich then thats a scam. It doesnt matter if the tools used to implement the scam also have legitimate functions. The OP’s son has been relieved of money and has had nothing of worth in return, but has been lead to believe he would have – thats a scam.

I am hungry incidentally and accept PayPal gift.

he OP’s son has been relieved of money and has had nothing of worth in return

I think that’s the issue. The Bitcoin was issued to him, he’s just then gifted it to the scammer as I understand it.

Still a scam, but much harder to get anything back out of it.

did he pay on debit card or bank transfer?

bank authorizations are a dark art – just because something is out of pattern to the human eye doesn’t mean it’ll be picked up, especially if multi-factor-authentication is used for a low-risk merchant.

Well, if anyone can interpret this – the messaging conversation for son’s first purchase it’d be good to understand what’s actually been bought:

Let’s proceed then
[21/06/2021, 5:34:03 pm] Cheryl: Do you’ve your starting capital of 3k now on your account?
[21/06/2021, 5:34:30 pm] son: I need to set it up first, how do I do that?
[21/06/2021, 5:39:37 pm] Cheryl: I’ll be the one trading for you at first alright so you can see how it’s all done.. so if you choose to reinvest with our platform, you can know how to go about the trading and how you can earn massively in just a week.. You’ll need to register a live trading account with my company’s platform tho so you can be able to monitor your trading and also be able to make withdrawal of your profit
[21/06/2021, 5:40:07 pm] Cheryl: But first you’ll need a Bitcoin wallet were you’ll need to purchase Bitcoin with your starting capital of $3000 cause we do trade via Bitcoin
[21/06/2021, 5:40:50 pm] son: Is it downloadable off the App Store?
[21/06/2021, 5:42:02 pm] Cheryl: I’m gonna give you a link were you can set up a wallet and also be able to purchase Bitcoin with your starting capital
[21/06/2021, 5:42:28 pm] Cheryl: Coinmama.com
[21/06/2021, 5:42:46 pm] Cheryl: Kindly click on this link now and send me the screenshot
‎[21/06/2021, 5:43:28 pm] son: ‎<attached: 00000038-PHOTO-2021-06-21-17-43-28.jpg>
[21/06/2021, 5:44:12 pm] Cheryl: Good
Now put the amount you wanna buy (3k) then click on buy and send me the screenshot
‎[21/06/2021, 5:46:06 pm] son: ‎<attached: 00000040-PHOTO-2021-06-21-17-46-06.jpg>
[21/06/2021, 5:46:12 pm] son: This is where I got to
[21/06/2021, 5:46:35 pm] Cheryl: Good
[21/06/2021, 5:46:37 pm] Cheryl: 14vKty9esTp24K1G9qXRFUAShpj36bcnnk
[21/06/2021, 5:47:16 pm] Cheryl: That’s my company’s Bitcoin wallet address.. copy it and past it on the Bitcoin wallet address option and then proceed further
[21/06/2021, 5:48:08 pm] Cheryl: Send me the screenshot if you’re having any issues
[21/06/2021, 5:49:55 pm] Cheryl: Copy the Bitcoin wallet address and past it on the Bitcoin wallet address option
[21/06/2021, 5:50:52 pm] son: Is there any chance of a referral code? Im struggling
[21/06/2021, 5:51:33 pm] Cheryl: Let’s take it step by step
[21/06/2021, 5:51:44 pm] Cheryl: Have you paste the address I gave you?
[21/06/2021, 5:51:47 pm] Cheryl: ..
[21/06/2021, 5:53:24 pm] son: Don’t worry I got there

and a little later he got him to set up a new email account and “a live trading account with my company’s platform so you can be able to monitor your trading and also be able to make withdrawal of your profit.. I’ll coach you on everything tho okay so you don’t have to feel confused.”

Interestingly on registering a trading account, my son’s attempt failed so

Cheryl: I guess I’ll have to register you myself
[21/06/2021, 6:31:56 pm] son: It’s annoying
[21/06/2021, 6:32:08 pm] Cheryl: Don’t worry okay I’ve got this
[21/06/2021, 6:32:21 pm] Cheryl: Do you another email apart from the one you used on this?
[21/06/2021, 6:35:31 pm] son: No only got one email
[21/06/2021, 6:35:40 pm] Cheryl: Oh
[21/06/2021, 6:35:55 pm] Cheryl: Can you create a new email re quick
[21/06/2021, 6:40:39 pm] son: Just have
[21/06/2021, 6:40:50 pm] Cheryl: Okay send me the email

And then, once his profits were £100K+, she kept saying he needed to pay a fee/tax/pin/maintainence fee to access the funds.

The volume of messaging is staggering, pretty intense. Scary.

So the joy of bitcoin is that you can sort of track the money. Obviously the accounts are all just numbers so that’s no use unless you know how to map an account back to a person.

But https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/14vKty9esTp24K1G9qXRFUAShpj36bcnnk shows the transaction history for that wallet, including a transaction on the 21st that comes to about £3K.

Note how the balance is 0, so they’re immediately forwarding to other accounts.

I am hungry incidentally and accept PayPal gift.

Can I interest you in a scamwich?

I’ll let myself out.

Wow.

That is really scary how quickly all that is happening.

Just looking at the timeline, ‘they’ knew that once they had got their teeth in, it was all going to go their way.

Scamming just seems to be getting worse by the week.

What can be done?

OP. Feel for you and your lad.

So the joy of bitcoin is that you can sort of track the money.

Unless they’ve been ‘tumbled’, a service that lets you mix your coins in with the common lot for a fee… Which they will have been, multiple times probably if Cheryl finished scam college. I’d forget trying to chase the coins and stick with hassling the bank. Is Cheryl, or Cheryl’s profile picture hot by the way? Just wondering how your son got suckered into all this. Or just usual story of wanting to get rich quick?

Wow.

On a positive – if you have those chat records, and the wallet address showing similar amounts from his account appearing in wallets – a fraud team would find it very difficult to argue that your son has not been a victim of fraud and yes, they should have spotted it.

Thanks. Ross – really interesting to see the link you provided, not that I really understand but starting to get the idea.

And the chat records – we have all the WHatsapp ones and it’s staggering the volume, took me a few hours just to skim through, ‘she’ was relentless (and good). The speed of her replies and tenacity was very impressive. Can easily see now how one can be taken in by it.

V much focused on the bank at the moment – it seems several transactions son tried to make didn’t go through (no call or questions from the bank) so Cheryl asked him to lower the amount immediately and then they went through. Then he’d make multiple payments. Not sure if this helps us.

I’d definitely use that as an argument that they should have contacted you. If they were blocking a payment as it’s unusual but simply splitting it up was fine, their countermeasures failed.

What barstewards.

See what comes out of the bank fraud investigation. Mine’s very on top of anything unusual and won’t let you contactless more than a couple of shops at a time without then having to use the pin, or get an email. It also sends warnings if anything is unusual, which you then have to approve.

Did he get any warning emails/texts from the bank – i.e. “You’ve just done xxx transaction, was this you ?”

Can you post a url of the scammers

I will happily spin them a yarn online via a vpn and lots of firewalls

See how many minutes i can keep them occupied, like the Microsoft help teams who ring to let me know my laptop has a virus and only they can clean it up

Microsoft help teams who ring to let me know my laptop has a virus and only they can clean it up

I sometimes try and think of a way to keep them occupied for an hour or two however my stock response is ‘I only run Linux’. Stops them in their tracks 🙂

I’d definitely use that as an argument that they should have contacted you. If they were blocking a payment as it’s unusual but simply splitting it up was fine, their countermeasures failed.

This.

I set off a QI klaxon if I spend more than a couple of hundred, they totally should’ve noticed thousands. Also, if I were to have a transaction refused then my account would be frozen until I’d spoken with the bank. I used to consider it a right pain in the ‘arris until the one time it actually was a fraudulent transaction that they’d red flagged.

Funny thing that, actually. I was away somewhere and at some point in the proceedings lost my bank card. I was travelling light so had the card stuffed in a pocket rather than it’s usual place in my wallet, and with hindsight I think I must have pulled it out inadvertently along with a hotel card or something. I was on my way home the next morning, stopped at a services for coffee, paid by contactless on my phone and got an alert from the bank. My card had been used back where I was the night before, then I pinged from 20 miles away a couple of minutes later and the bank went “hang on…” Up until that point I didn’t even know I’d lost it and spent the first few minutes going “of course I have my card! It’s right he- oh. Ah.”

Pretty clever that they flagged it based purely on geography, rerally.

I sometimes try and think of a way to keep them occupied for an hour or two however my stock response is ‘I only run Linux’. Stops them in their tracks

I’ve done this only not expressly told them. “Can you click on the Start button for me?” Oh, I don’t have one of those…

Then he’d make multiple payments. Not sure if this helps us.

It should do, definitely a red flag to any bank upto date with anti fraud, especially if higher amounts had been attempted & stopped previously. Keep pressing the bank on this one & good luck with it all, must be horrible for your son & family.

I sometimes try and think of a way to keep them occupied for an hour or two however my stock response is ‘I only run Linux’. Stops them in their tracks

I have played along with them for a bit acting dumb – 40 mins until they gave up

Here’s the lovely Cheryl(!) if anyone wants to get in touch

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2mbbSkM]WhatsApp Image 2021-07-12 at 18.16.09[/url] by aus23, on Flickr

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2mb83w7]WhatsApp Image 2021-07-12 at 18.15.52[/url] by aus23, on Flickr

So an update in case anyone is interested.

Bank has been really good at escalating this, treating it seriously and with empathy. However they have flatly refused to take any responsibility so the loss falls 100% on my son. I can see their point.

They have advised me to take it to the ombudsman if still unhappy. I suspect they’ve a watertight case.

Might be worth trying the ombudsman as it doesn’t cost you anything (IIRC) and there is a chance (however small) that they side with your son.

Here’s the lovely Cheryl(!) if anyone wants to get in touch

She probably doesn’t even exist and has just lifted those photos from someone else’s account!

If I was a professional currency trader, I’d probably be too busy trading and making money to be harassing young people via Instagram. I’m sorry your son got duped, but this sort of thing is avoidable. The bank owes you/him nothing.

I think your only slight glimmer of hope at this point would be going to the press and try to tug on some heartstrings and shame the bank into an act of goodwill.

Take it to the ombudsman.

Him trying multiple large amounts then going for smaller amounts could and should have been picked up and flagged by their anti-fraud algorithms, that was avoidable.

Maybe ask the bank what anti fraud systems they have in place and ask specifically why they haven’t got any that will flag up unusual transactions like that. Send their responses to the ombudsman/bank’s Twitter account/local and national newspapers.

They should definitely have spotted this as a potential fraud.