If you watch the video in full, you’ll see earlier attempts to stop the customer didn’t work. Pretending to be from Monzo was an attempt to get through to the customer before she lost a life changing amount of money.
These scams are often high pressure, and time sensitive as they always include a call to action - if you don’t do this now, x y z will happen. Reporting it to the police would have done nothing to help this customer as their money would be long gone. (And it’s worth noting that Jim states he always reports it to the local police, and that they have thus far done nothing.)
These scams work because people don’t recognise them to be scams, and usually involve significant sums. I believe it absolutely essential that content such as this is made available, because people need to be able to recognise this type of thing.
I myself had a number of calls from an HMRC type scam at the start of lockdown, where they attempted to tell me I owed a massive sum and was going to be arrested. Every time I asked questions, it eventually led to the phone being put down on me. Odd - I thought I owed money?! Eventually they took me off the call list. I’d never fall for any of these scams but unfortunately so many do, and I agree with raising awareness wherever possible.
I’ve not watched the video but hanging up is no good if they phone your landline. They can keep the line open and then pretend they’re Monzo after you’ve dialled the number on the back of the card
Different from a mobile I suppose as you know the last call was terminated anyways.
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Anarchist
(Press ‘Help’ search ‘Contact us’ or email help@monzo.com or call 0800 802 1281)
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Which seems incompetent at actually stopping the problem. If the NCA or whoever it is did their job right (and/or was given the resources to do so) we wouldn’t be having these discussions nor would videos like these be published. I had my fair share of scam/fraud attempts and reporting them is a waste of time; when it comes to Action Fraud it seems like unless you’ve actually fallen for the scam you can’t even report it to begin with - there is no way to report an attempt.
call the (UK) police, Lloyds Bank or Monzo immediately
So what the police do? Even assuming everyone is cooperating and doing their best, it’s likely to take at least one day for the accounts involved to be closed; these scammers can move the money into an irrecoverable form (cash, crypto, etc) in minutes.
Speaking of calling Monzo specifically, I tried reporting a Monzo account number involved in an HMRC scam call; I had to brute-force my way through the IVR (most paths just tell me to chat and hang up) and eventually wait 10 minutes in a queue before being able to talk to a human, and obviously for data protection reasons he couldn’t really tell me much, so I’m not sure how much money this particular account had already laundered and whether the account was even closed immediately following my report or left open longer for the next victim to transfer their money into (in my case they asked for several thousands).
He seems to have worked with the BBC (or at least provided material for their investigation) which lead to actual arrests
Call me cynical but the only reason something was done is because that particular case had media attention. In other videos of his he explicitly mentions reporting other scams to the Indian police and never hears back (or the contact form doesn’t even work).
This was a scary video to watch. Hopefully Monzo can work with other banks and Apple/Google to find ways to prevent screen sharing during the sign-up process to protect potential victims.
That doesn’t mean you can’t be on hold for hours. Just those hours are separated into 20 minute periods and less than a minute of redialing. Yes it isn’t one connection of continuous hours but nethertheless, you could be on hold over a number of hours.
I’ve now forced myself to watch the whole thing - that was hard going
I’m not sure how much Monzo or any other bank can really do to combat a scam that can locate someone patient and trusting enough to be pushed around and shouted at for five hours by someone who rang them out of the blue
Cannot help being a bit grimly amused by them saying that Monzo will never ring you!
There perhaps just needs to be better education about this. Monzo don’t really put any money into educating the wider public about it, it’s expensive and of little benefit to perhaps most people.
The only bank I can say do a good job at this is Barclays - they frequently run their scam spotting adverts on TV and elsewhere which do not even advertise Barclays products and simply exist to think more about scams and how they work.
