Your Bank is being used by fraudsters

It looks like this thread has strayed a little far from the original intent and is going in circles. Please remember to be nice.

If you have any further concerns, please do contact the team directly through any of our support channels. :slight_smile:

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I’ve make you aware of a problem. I’ve made you aware what is happening. The thread gets over 60 responses some positive and and some not and your answer is to delete it. Moderation at its finest.

Your people need to investigate how fraudsters are managing to circumvent your supposed ‘hardest bank to open accounts with’ status. Because seriously these people are not going to open an account that can be traced to them. You might say oh they can do this at any bank but they didn’t choose any bank they chose this one and that wasn’t random.

Delete the thread again if you want. I work on the internet and I will be posting reviews of my experience of reporting a serious attempted fraud using your bank on here everywhere I can including actionfraud.

It’s not deleted. It’s still there

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Did you get a phone number? No
Did you get a full account number? No
Did you get any identifying information other than a sort code that could help catch the person? No

It’s like me calling the police and saying I saw someone steal a car but only saying it was a Red Ford driven by a man :upside_down_face:

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Hello @Triffid

The topic wasn’t deleted. I’m sorry if you feel like this was mishandled in anyway.

We made the decision to lock the topic as no new further information was being highlighted and that it was no longer serving its original purpose.

We would be more than happy to discuss this with you, and @simonb has reached out for further information. :slight_smile:

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It sucks that this happened to you :frowning:️. What specifically would you like Monzo to do in order to make you happy with the situation?

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Might not have been a fraudster who opened the account. The Monzo account might have been compromised.

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Your thread is still here - https://community.monzo.com/t/your-bank-is-being-used-by-fraudsters ?

For what it’s worth, if you provide enough information to identify the fraudster, then I have the utmost confidence that it’ll be definitively handled. These fraudsters don’t hang around on accounts long (and the money stays in them for even less time still!), so it’s always crucial to get as much data as possible as quickly as possible.

Monzo certainly convince me that they take fraud on their systems extremely seriously - they have made serious inroads - since the days of first issuing cards - into identifying and tackling fraudulent activity even after accounts have been opened in ways I can tell you that other ‘retail banks’ have not even come close to working on. It does them absolutely no good to have fraudsters in their midst, and I am confused at the suggestion that they are doing anything other than their best here with what they have. There’s a presentation somewhere from quite a while back where they talk about their work on driving down fraudulent activity.

At least monzo caps the maximum daily outbound FPS limit at a relatively low value (some banks allow >50k per day with no further checks!), and I am confident they would address any issues quickly: case in point - within 30 minutes, they asked you for more information.

What do you propose would be your ideal solution here, based on the information you have supplied so far, other than for the bank to ask for as much detail as you have and promise to look into it?

I can also tell you that I have personally dealt with reporting CEO/supplier fraud scams involving fraudsters using accounts at a number of high-street banks; this is not at all a problem that other banks have ‘solved’ in any way.

After working at the pointy end of this with other banks the response from Monzo even this far is a world apart from a high-street bank who I contacted by phone and who essentially said that they had no mechanism to report suspected fraud internally and that I would have to report the fraud to my bank - who of course would have no interest in doing anything as we’d intercepted the attempt on our customer before any money was sent. Eventually they begrudgingly took the details and said they’d try to get someone to look into it.

Equally, another large high street bank, even though I knew someone who worked at the bank, it took an argument between my contact and their fraud department to even get them to take the report seriously.

You appear to have come in with a preconceived notion that there are no effective KYC checks at monzo based on your exposure to a convincing fraudster who apparently had access to an account, or that the KYC checks at other banks are infallible: it’s simply not the case.

Fraudsters are the people who know best what documentation is needed to open accounts and where the limits are to avoid detection, or simply steal other people’s legitimate accounts to use in this fraud. Though the obvious goal is 0 fraud, some will slip through the net at practically any financial institution: then it is just a case of stopping it as quickly as possible.

(Minor edits to make part of this a bit more readable)

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I work on the internet and I will be posting reviews of my experience of reporting a serious attempted fraud using your bank on here everywhere I can including actionfraud.

I’m sure everyone at :monzo: is now shit-scared by such a threat.

Seriously dude, chill out - everything has been said on the previous thread already, and Monzo reached out to you to get more information if available. However I don’t see why you’re still pursuing the matter even though you don’t even have any way of pinpointing the fraudulent account.

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What have you actually given Monzo to identify the account you claim was being used fraudulently? That a Scottish woman was talking on it? Do they need to close all accounts that belong to Scottish women even though it might be owned by someone else and could have been stolen by the methods tried on you? Monzo staff are good, but they are not clairvoyant’s.

What are they going to actually investigate? They have nothing to investigate because you gave them nothing to investigate. They have asked for as much details as possible from you and I would given them everything you can. They can check their account opening practices, but I will be honest, they are better than many high street banks. Try opening a Monzo account to find out.

The thread wasn’t deleted. You don’t have any reviews of the account, you have a review of your bank and how someone almost convinced you to transfer money from it.

Your actual story is a good one about how you can successfully stop fraudulent transactions. Don’t blame the fraud of another bank because someone can legitimately open an account with them or they could have successfully stolen it if from someone more gullible. Keep telling your story how you were successful and next time take down identifying details in order to allow Monzo and/or the police to identify the account.

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Maybe this will help convince you, that this is sadly not a problem limited to monzo:

This very same method of fraud happened at NatWest

Barclays

And many others

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In all fairness I do not think this is only a problem with Monzo, the other day I had a text message and phone call from ‘Barclays’. Automated menus… I knew it was a scam so just put on a funny accent, collected all the information and sent it to the real Barclays…

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With the information you gave, it’s not even close to enough to investigate more than what has already been said.

You say you’re not angry, but it sure seems like you are.

You keep reminding us that you have worked on computers/the internet since 1995 - if this is true, then you should know that it’s not any easier to open an account with Monzo than say, Barclay’s. The difference is that it’s easier to submit the same, required (by law) verification details. Do not confuse the two.

Walking into Barclay’s with my passport, where they scan the image, is no more or less secure than me submitting my scanned passport to Monzo. The only difference is that it’s far more efficient for me the way Monzo do it.

While fraud is not good, and I have been victim of this myself, at the end of the day you are not a victim of fraud, because you used your brain and recognised that this was a scam - though if you let her get to the point of giving bank details out to transfer funds I am skeptical of some details here - and you reported it to your bank. You reported it to Monzo, so well done.

Being angry at Monzo seems illogical, at least to me.

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Goodness people are mean.

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I don’t think anyone’s trying to be mean, they’re just explaining the situation & what it’s reasonable to expect :slight_smile:

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I’m talking about fraudsters, @Alexs

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Yes, it would have been easy to say the person was a Troll and just posting crap or other such negative comments, however people have been constructive in their replies, asking questions, making suggestions, I don’t think that is mean.

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Let’s head back on topic. One of my pet hates is often people will focus on negative far too much here. Respect Monzo’s decision to close and move forward.

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Something that I am surprised hasn’t been mentioned (unless I missed it).

Has the fraud attempt been reported to the police? If not this should be done ASAP. They may not be able to do a great deal but it will give you a crime reference number that you can then give to companies when discussing the case. Further details regarding the call could potentially be found from your telecoms company (or mobile operator if the call was received on a mobile). Regardless upon whether the number was spoofed, they may be able to trace it.

If the report is taken seriously by the police and telecoms company they may be able to find enough information for the police to investigate which in itself may gain information that Monzo could then use to lock down any affected accounts.

As is it is not that Monzo does not want to investigate, they just have nothing to go on. By all means, reporting it to them would allow them to keep an eye on odd account behaviour that might meet this type of scam but I would expect they are looking out for such types of transfers anyway.

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