Beware of a flex scam that has just happened. It was a very sophisticated scam and something I am ashamed I have fallen for as I am usually very vigilant.
An unknown charge of £21.40 came off my
Flex account for the Greene King pub. Somewhere I have never visited. So I froze my card and tried to report the transaction as suspicious to Monzo. It came up saying “Sorry, something has gone wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.” So I kept trying and even sent a help message to the app chat but had no response.
The next day, I received a phone call from the fraud and prevention team. The person called himself Sebastian Moore and spoke with a very posh accent and told me that they had spotted suspicious activity on my card. They repeated my name and address and said that the charge was for £21.40 at the Greene King. Then they proceeded to tell me that there was another charge for £775 at Smile Dentistry trying to come out. I told them I had froze my account and they commended on me on doing the right thing.
They then said I had to close my flex account and re-open a new one as the security on my account was compromised. I had messages saying that I needed to record a video of myself etc. at that time, the Monzo chat assistant said that there was a lock on my account and they had me do the full security reset. All was well.
Then the person called me again and said that they would need to get my insurance sorted for a refund. They asked not to repeat the card number, only the last 10 digits. They had a reference number and everything for me and even got me to go onto the Action Fraud Police UK website to report it all. Which I did using the reference number.
I had froze the new flex account because I was suspicious but after the in chat assistant said that the fraud team contacting me was a good sign. So I had no reason to believe it was a scam. It was only when he said the security team was going to run diagnostics on my account, the flex card recorded a transaction to Apple Store for £2488. He said this was to test the card worked on their side. I instantly got that gut wrenching feeling that I had been scammed.
He insisted that I use my savings to pay off the flex amount and I would get the money back in 7 days. That was the final ringer. I instantly froze the card and I instantly went back into the in app chat to report what had happened.
I feel so stupid. I have a young newborn and in the midst of this happening I have been trying to be a parent and I lost sight of my instincts until the charge happened.
I have contacted in app support and I hope they can resolve this and get my money back. I don’t have £2500 to spend and this has made me feel so down.
This sucks. I really hope that Monzo takes initiative and gets your money back to you. Please keep us updated.
As @sam_s said, if you’re ever unsure about who’s calling you, simply go Home Screen → Profile Picture → Settings → Privacy and security. At the top there’s a box which has three states it can be in. These are “We’re not talking to you”, “Talking to you now”, and “No internet, don’t answer”.
It’s always better to hang up and then call Monzo back on 0800 802 1281 (Monzo UK phone number). If you’re sure that it’s fraud, you can call 159 (UK Fraud helpline). (not tryna be patronising in any way, but I’m just putting this in here in case something like this were to happen again in the future)
Support might take a bit of time, but at the same time please make sure they don’t forget about this. If necessary (if Monzo don’t give you your money back), please submit a formal complaint, and go to the financial ombudsman (worst case scenario).
Under pressure, ‘simply’ goes out of the window unfortunately. I would NEVER look at my phone/app for verification if I received a call and experienced this.
Hi David. Yeah, my wording in that was properly shit. That’s my bad.
Realistically, neither would I in a situation like this, and I am very sorry to @Mountainman if it seemed like I was suggesting that this was an obvious thing to do.
Is it possible that we could get someone at Monzo to potentially get this in a more prominent location within the app. I realise that this would take a fair amount of coding (my brother does software development), and I’m not even sure where it could be placed within the app, but could this get looked at? I didn’t wanna mention Alan incase this isn’t his area or it’s not an important enough thing to be looked at.
We’ve been bringing up its positioning every time it’s mentioned since the feature was released so they know the communities opinion on where it should be. They must have some data that says it’s not worth moving
Don’t worry, now I know I can be more vigilant and having that “we’re not calling you, hang up now” on the main page of the app when you are in a phone call would be handy as they had me go into my app and do things and if had seen that I could have ended things right there and then.
The real fraud team are going to take a look at it and hopefully the charge can be reversed and I won’t have the outstanding charge on my flex account.
Still peeved I was duped but I’ve already learned so much, especially the 10 digits info where the first 6 are the same regardless, the how to spot a fake call etc. sadly it took a scam to realise but I’m in a stronger position if there is another scam attempt!
I will say this, the phone caller sounded a lot like Paul Bettany. At times it almost sounded like Jarvis from Iron Man was talking to me - so I wonder if they were using AI tools to hide their voice? I did wonder that but then thought I was being a little crazy.
I think there’s a lot of this going around at the moment, although it was for my normal Monzo card rather than flex. I had an active card check for some random irrigation manufacture in the states. Luckily I noticed it and froze my card within minutes. But later in the day I got called by someone claiming to be from Monzo who firstly asked whether I’d authorised an expensive transaction on booking.com in Dubai… obviously no, then they wanted more details from me which I refused to give. Key thing was when I said he’d cold called me and I’d phone back Monzo myself about it he got a bit shouty, and claimed he could send me a text from Monzo to prove who he was… this turned out to be an account recovery code message which I’m guessing anyone could generate by trying to log in. Just annoyed there’s no way to help track down these people and they likely simply move on to the next potential victim.
I’m really sorry to hear this and hope you get your money back.
There is a TV show (I think it’s on BBC) called Scam Interceptors. Rav Wilding is the host. They intercept calls from scam call centres all over the world that are being made to real people and listen in and warn/block where they can.
It’s sad as a few of the people still get scammed regardless of the teams efforts, but it’s interesting and insightful to see just how sophisticated these scams are getting and is useful to know what type of scams are out there and how they get you. The above type of scam has also featured.
Just to let everyone know that Monzo have sorted everything out and the huge weight that was on my shoulders has been lifted!
I have heard of frustrations with the in app chat but thankfully they were quick to sort me out and I’m very pleased with the level of service.
Funnily enough, I had another call from ‘The Monzo Fraud Team’, this time to tell me that I had a charge of £97.24 coming from my flex account charged to BetFred. Thankfully my flex is deactivated until my new card arrives and they quoted the old credit card number. I checked my app in the privacy settings to see it was not Monzo calling and when she said “would you like me to get this all sorted for you?”, I politely told her to shove her help where the sun doesn’t shine and if they ever called me again, my foot would be joining it up there as well.
Thanks for all the messages of support and hopefully this will help someone else. A few people have told me this has happened to them at other banks and they’ve fell for it, so it seems an easy way to fall prey but now I’m educated it won’t happen again.
Posting here for awareness on this, just happened to us. They had our postcode and phone number. They managed to charge the flex card with £3000 in Apple store in Westfield, Stratford. This seems to be happening a lot from what I read and wonder if tfl hack may have something to do with it for them to have gotten the flex card details.
