My £6,000 fraud case could be solved, but the police won't even try
You’re more likely to be the victim of fraud than any other crime and no wonder, crooks know that the chances of being caught are minimal.
Just ask Gary Nield, whose ordeal began when he was phoned supposedly by Revolut and warned that his card was being used to buy goods at John Lewis in London.
During the call a notification flashed up on his screen which also appeared to be from Revolut, asking him to approve an £849 transaction. He declined.
The “Revolut” caller then asked about his other bank accounts and suggested there was a security problem with RBS.
This was followed by a caller claiming to be from RBS telling him that his account would have to be frozen due to a security breach but first he could transfer his savings to Revolut.
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Gary refused and the caller hung up. He then saw that £6,000 had been stolen from his Revolut account and transferred to cryptocurrency exchange Binance, and £119 had been spent at Argos.
Gary is adamant that he never clicked on any links, revealed any security information or in any other way compromised his account.
“It seems to me that the scammers had full details of one of the cards attached to my Revolut account and this was used for the transactions,” he said.
“The scammers were being greedy by trying to get me to transfer more funds from RBS to Revolut in order to steal it.”
He immediately reported the issue to Revolut and the police.
Revolut told him that it could find no trace of fraudulent activity on his account, insisted that he must have carried out the transfers himself and refused to reimburse him.
Action Fraud forwarded his case to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, which responded by saying that there were no leads to pursue.
Gary, a negligence claims manager from Hyde, Gtr Manchester, told me: “The claim that there are no viable lines of enquiry is just plain wrong.
“Binance sets a high bar for those opening up accounts with them, they would be able to identify whoever received the £6,000. This is an actionable and solvable case of fraud.”
Binance confirmed that it was happy to help the police. A spokesman said: “We assist law enforcement agencies around the world with their investigations on a daily basis, and this case is no different. We are willing to assist law enforcement in pursuing the culprit to the fullest extent."
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Gary complained about Action Fraud’s lack of, well, action, and was contacted by the City of London Police, the national lead force on fraud.
They admitted there might be a potential line of enquiry but it would not be investigated due to the pressure of around 50,000 fraud reports every month.
Its letter conceded: "It is acknowledged that only a small percentrage of frauds reported to Action Fraud will ever be investigated and the fraudster(s) brought to justice", admitting this was “not satisfactory”.
There was better news from Revolut after I took up Gary’s case.
It concluded that his card had somehow been registered to ApplePay without his permission and he has now been refunded as a goodwill gesture.
“We are sorry that our customer was targeted by scammers," said a spokesman. "We take our responsibility to protect and support our customers extremely seriously."
I asked Action Fraud why it would not request Binance to provide details of whoever owns the account that received the stolen money.
"The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau do request information from Binance, who cooperate with law enforcement, however on this occasion they were not contacted due to limited lines of enquiry being available," said Det Supt Gary Miles.
"Requests to companies like Binance are made when it can support evidence of fraudulent activity in the UK, in conjunction with other viable lines of enquiry.”
Binance might be able to identify the culprits, but since the police won’t ask them for information, we’ll never know.
The last Gary heard about it was an email from something called the National Economic Crime Victim Care Unit offering support but emphasising that it “doesn’t investigate crime and cannot assist in the recovery of any losses”.
“This is so pathetic,” he told me. “They have no resources to catch criminals but they’ll be there to wipe away your tears.”
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