I’m desperate. A year ago, I transferred £150,000 from my Virgin Money account to one that I believed to be a one-year fixed-rate bond with Prudential. In fact, it belonged to fraudsters. I discovered it was a fraud 12 months later when the bond was due to mature.
Virgin Money is refusing to refund me because it asked me to verify the beneficiary account before allowing the first payment. I duly checked the company registration number, which did belong to Prudential, and phoned Prudential customer services to confirm it was a genuine company.
If lay customers were always able to successfully verify they were dealing with fraudsters, there would never be any fraud! I had no history of investing large sums of money, and was only asked to verify the details of the firm once before I made the first of seven payments to a Bank of America account.
I’ve since found that M&G (the parent company of Prudential) had reported this account as fraudulent to Bank of America three days before I made my first payment, and a full 17 days before I made the last. If the account had been frozen I would not have lost my savings.
HTY, Ashtead, Surrey
You have distressingly lost your life savings to what is known as a clone investment scam. Criminals set up fake companies using the name, address and firm reference number of reputable brands, and may send sales brochures that link to the websites of the genuine companies. Only the keenest eye would spot the discrepancy in the email and phone…
