Advice Needed - Fraud with Monzo

Monzo Chat
27

TL;DR - it all got sorted today, interestingly and thankfully :grinning:

Long story short, a fair bit of digging required from my side including, eventually, a Subject Access Request to Foot Asylum. This found that whilst my details were in their payment system, there was nothing in their order system so the ‘Delivery Address’ claimed by PayPal on the chargeback dispute was completely false.

It took me a while to collate everything but my case to Monzo basically included:

  • Subject Access Request showing my details weren’t against the orders
  • Proof I’ve had the same, current email used with PayPal for years and this is different to the one used with Foot Asylum
  • Work expense claims and hotel bookings to show I wasn’t anywhere near the IP address of the transactions
  • Action Fraud report I filed with a crime number

Whoever did this had somehow got my card details (no idea how this could have happened - skimming, a website breach…?) and set up a PayPal account in my name and, concerningly with my address. They’d also set up a false email in my name, something the SAR showed.

The orders ended up going to a W6 postcode near Hammersmith - I haven’t been there for over 2 years, don’t know anyone there, and I live in South East London :thinking: I’m completely stumped.

Things I’ve learnt through all of this:

  • my details were listed on 192.com from when my old housemate forgot to opt me out of the Electoral Role. Take Down Requests are very useful if you want your details kept offline :+1:

  • Monzo will raise a Formal Complaint on your behalf, even if you’re not actually complaining. I was issued a ‘Final Decision’ for something I still don’t know what it was about :exploding_head: They’ve acknowledged they maybe need to look at their Complaints process which in this case was a big waste of everyone’s time and eroded a lot of goodwill.

  • companies love hiding behind GDPR and will do anything they can to get out of providing you information. Use SARs to your advantage.

  • Monzo’s new chat handling, where different COps takeover a conversation, is massively frustrating and illogical. Most of my messages were referred to specialists and then subsequently got intercepted by other COps whilst I was waiting for a reply - it just doesn’t work in these situations.

  • Monzo made the right decision to reject the chargeback based on the evidence they had, despite this being flawed. However, they provided no help / assistance as to what my next steps would be if I wanted to take it further e.g. speak to the merchant or get evidence it wasn’t me. Nor did they suggest identity theft could be a risk, something PayPal flagged to me immediately when I spoke to them.

  • Foot Asylum’s fraud checks failed. They admitted an order going to one address but being paid for by a PayPal account registered to another address should have flagged and not been processed :roll_eyes:

All-in-all, stressful and draining, but I have now been reimbursed almost £250 for the fraudulent transactions and I hope Monzo can get this back from PayPal.

Good luck with your attempts to get your money back too - just be thankful it wasn’t any more than £30.

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