Don’t you have any checks or verifications as to who can open an account with you?
I was hit with a very convincing scam today and it was only when they wanted me to transfer all my real bank funds into an account held at your ‘Bank’ that I realised it was a scam.
No I didn’t get the account number… with hindsight I should have just the sort code 04-00-04.
This was not a Nigerian whatever this was a Scottish ‘lady’ who had clearly worked in a Bank before, was very convincing and had all the answers. Luckily I spotted it before I lost all my money… others will not be so lucky and you people are just as responsible for providing her with the facility as she is for perpretating this fraud.
Glad you didn’t get scammed but banks are used by fraudsters, it’s not the banks fault. ID can be stolen by family members etc but unless you have a name or account number what do you expect the bank to do?
Flagging this for @cookywook and @simonb as they’ll be able to pass this through to the relevant people. You might have some good info to help them detect these accounts in future.
a High Street Bank would need ID to link an account to
I didn’t get the account number… my bad
this was a very sophisticated scam. They spoofed the real Bank phone number when they called me back
Considering I almost lost a lot of money and I work on the internet all day so I’m well versed in internet scams… I cannot believe that they have not been successful many times and it hasn’t been reported to whoever runs this place.
Anyone can open a bank account anywhere as long as they pass ID verification & haven’t been flagged before.
If you made Monzo aware of this (or anyone had in the past), I expect they could have done / could do something but otherwise they can’t anticipate a random person trying to commit fraud.
Hey… sorry to hear this. In the interest of other users what was the scam exactly? It doesn’t sound that sophisticated to me if they failed to even communicate the account number to you.
Passport and soft check for address are needed. This spoofing number is so common in scams, must be a way it can be stopped. Your anger is justified at the scammer
Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, unless you don’t have credit history. When I once opened my Barclays account, I didn’t even send them a scanned copy of my ID. It could have been a scammer using my name and details.
Also, it could always be a hijacked dormant account.
Could you please give some details of this scam if you feel comfortable.Glad that you didn’t lose anything but your experience might help someone here.
I can’t answer for Monzo but they have same sort of checks any other bank would do so scammer could have open account with any bank its just happened to be Monzo in your case IMO.
Hey @anon98360309 - Really sorry to hear this has happened. If you don’t mind, I’ll reach out privately to get the details from you? Unless you’re happy to provide more information publicly?
We absolutely do perform checks and verifications on account opening. Some are visible (such as the in-app ID verification during signup ) and some invisible. These are generally the same checks that any other UK bank performs.
While I appreciate that this doesn’t help you at this point, if anybody else finds a similar situation, please record as much detail as possible and contact us through any of our support channels (even if you don’t use Monzo yourself). We will investigate from there!
It was the fraudelent activity on your card scam. Then she reads out some transactions which are obviously not mine. Listen I am not stupid… I don’t fall for this stuff in fact I sometimes just string them along to waste half an hour if I can be bothered so that is half an hour less they have to scam someone else.
But this one really did almost get me because this Scottish woman was good I mean really good. She knew all the questions and and had answers before I even asked them. It was only when she gave me the sort code to transfer my funds to a “temporary account” and it was this bank and not my own that I thought WTF.
Seriously this scam will net a lot of money if I am almost a victim and ok no acc number but surely some of these victimes will be in touch with more information
And the number spoofed was your real bank? They are good. Scum of the earth for sure but they know what they’re doing. Did you contact your bank and tell them? they can keep an eye out for it. Hopefully someone will get the account details.
This is the hallmark of a fraud. No bank will EVER ask you to do this. Under no circumstances. It doesn’t matter whether the “temporary account” is with the same bank as yours.
Also, faking the originating phone number of an outbound call is trivial. I’ve done it on multiple occasions,when I needed to pretend I’m calling from some place, while being at a different place. Takes 2 minutes…
Call the bank back, on an independently verified number, before answering any sensitive questions, next time.
(nb please don’t misunderstand: I’m not “victim blaming”. Your anger is justified. I’m aiming this at those who might read along, to learn for the next case!)
) and some invisible. These are generally the same checks that any other UK bank performs.