Barclays

The firms customer we mentioned earlier fell victim to a safe account scam, which is a type of bank impersonation. This is where the scammer pretends to be the bank, and convinces the victim they need to move the money out of the account because it is under threat.

The victim in that case said:

“I received a text message supposedly from Barclays’ fraud team, warning me about a fraudulent transaction and to expect a phone call. Shortly after I received a call from an 02476 Barclays phone number, so I believed it to be from my bank.”

This is a common approach used by scammers to target the bank’s customers, as well as customers from all other banks.

Fraudsters can ‘spoof’ banks’ numbers or create numbers extremely similar to the banks, meaning the call or SMS appears to come from the bank. With SMS messages, they can also join the chain of previously trusted SMS messages received from the bank again making them seem legitimate.

They use this to convey legitimacy and convince you that it is the bank on the phone trying to protect your funds. They promote a ‘safe account’ set up for you to transfer the money to, but unfortunately this account is one controlled by the scammers. In that case, Barclays did not appear to have refunded the victim despite the convincing nature of the scam.

A famous actor recently fell victim to a similar type of scam impersonating Barclays where they called from the bank’s phone number, and warned the public to watch out for the warning signs.

If you have lost money to APP fraud from your Barclays account, FundsUnity could help you get your money back from your bank and you can fill in our fraud refund claim form for a free consultation. Our fee is 15% plus VAT on anything that we get back, and we don’t charge anything if we are not successful. For larger cases, the fee is subject to a maximum of £10k plus VAT per case.   

Remember you don’t need to use a company like FundsUnity, you could work your case yourself for free! If you’d like to get a refund yourself, you can do this by following our bank transfer refund guide.

Customers often ask if they can get money back if they paid by bank transfer, or if they can get money back if they pay by BACS. The answer is yes, victims of scams may be able to get their funds when they paid by either of these methods.

With the cost living crisis, fraudsters have started impersonating councils offering refunds, and energy companies offering refunds or rebates. The firm has reported itself that it has seen this, and it is important the public hang up when someone calls them offering this.

The aim of the scammer in this example is to try and get you to login to your account to check the refund you have received while the scammer has remote access of your device, at which point they show you they have sent you funds by accident and convince you to send the money back. In fact, they have just changed a line of code on the screen to display a different amount. Victims are then left out of pocket for the money that was sent.