PSA: Why Monzo freezes accounts, because of stuff like this

Monzo Chat
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I’ve just passed this onto monzo. May need looking into :eyes:

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Am I reading this right
 You’re supposed to give someone your bank details, they’ll transfer money in there, leave you £700 and then transfer the rest out?

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Sounds too good to be true right?

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There’s no way that could be dodgy

Except in every way of course

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But if this is an attempt at money laundering, surely where it goes next is just as traceable?

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You know all those innocent people with starving babies and being evicted crying on the internet about having their accounts frozen? The vast majority of them will have allowed someone to access their account like this.

Yes there will be a few false positives, but they’re relatively rare.

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Oh I don’t doubt that. I rarely believe “company has taken action against me but I’ve done nothing wrong”

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I guess the convincing part in all of that is you’re given the option to take all your money out first, so he can’t take any of your funds.

In this instance a naive person would think that it’s only once and I make a quick bit of money, what harm can it do.

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I file it away in the same place as “This business is REFUSING to take my money”

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I guess they just keep moving it - so you never know who is ‘innocent’ and who is guilty

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Without detailing how (for obvious reasons!) there are numerous ways to move money out of a bank account that aren’t traceable. Or at least are very very difficult to trace anyway.

Yes it will be a big red flag for the bank (hence the account closures) but the money is essentially ‘gone’ by the time that flag is raised.

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Scammers and hackers do not fall for it . I had phishing scams last year. I manage to trace them brazil. But monzo is do iron vlad 007 style security they can’t tough it.

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I had a message from someone on Twitter once. I’d tweeted about Monzo, nothing dodgy, just something about them being great, when I had a DM from someone claiming to be from Syria. He was wanting to open an account so he could get money to his family but as Monzo was only for people in the UK he was unable. After a bit of back and forth he asked if he could buy my Monzo account?! He assured me that it was nothing dodgy. I forwarded the messages to Monzo straight away.

Anyone who’s stupid or greedy enough to fall for that stuff shouldn’t be in charge of a bank account IMO

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Isn’t this a version of bank cuckooing which normally results in a Cifas mark

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I don’t doubt they’ll indeed “give” you 700£. After all, for the scam to work there needs to be people believing it, so 700£ (of stolen money that’s not theirs to begin with) is a small price to pay if it means people will keep falling for it (there’s a small percentage of victims that will be lucky and will actually keep the 700£ for a long period of time, and those will either encourage their friends to participate or even themselves will go for a second attempt at it).

Of course in most cases you won’t get to keep the 700£, you’d actually lose money, both the 700£ and the rest of the incoming payment which you would’ve sent out already via a non-recoverable method (Western Union, cryptocurrencies, gift cards, physical goods, etc).

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The problem with the bad people they use the same things as good people and flags show on good peoples accounts at any bank I had virgin money label monzo as a tool for fraudsters and scammers to get your money

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