Lost money to a Safe Account Scam?
We help victims of Safe Account Scams recover their money.
What to do if you’ve lost money in a Safe Account Scam
Banks regularly deny claims for unfair reasons. A fraud gets called a civil matter, a generic pop-up gets called a warning, or a convincing scam gets judged with hindsight. None of those reasons is the final word. Decisions can be challenged and escalated to the Financial Ombudsman Service, and we know where they most often go wrong.
How to spot a safe account scam
Safe account scams start with a call from a number that matches your bank and a warning that your money is at risk right now. You are urged to move it somewhere safe, quickly and quietly, and the account waiting for it belongs to the fraudsters.
How do safe account scams work?
Safe account scams often begin before the phone even rings. Fraudsters can purchase your details online through data leaks. Or, you may have previously responded to a fake SMS impersonating a delivery company like Evri or the Royal Mail, HMRC, or the NHS and entered some personal details without thinking much of it. The fraudsters now have enough information to sound convincingly like your bank or the police when they call.
When they do call, they will most likely have spoofed your bank’s number. This means the call appears on your phone as a legitimate, recognisable number, or an SMS drops into the same thread as genuine messages from your bank. This is what makes safe account scams so difficult to detect, because every visual signal is telling you the contact is real.
Fraudsters are very smart in how they operate, and they will sound very sophisticated in the way they speak. They will conduct security checks, just like the bank would, and they will claim they are from your bank’s fraud department.
Once they have you on the line, they create a sense of urgency to make you panic. They will read out a list of large transactions they claim have been attempted on your account. They tell you that you have not made these payments, but someone is trying to take your money right now, and you need to act quickly.
The scammers will sometimes use other banks as a way to deceive you, and you may receive calls or SMS messages from different numbers claiming they are working with your bank to prevent the fraud.
The scammers then present the scam: they tell you to move your money to a safe account they will provide information about immediately, to protect it. Believing you are following your bank’s instructions, you make the transfer. That account belongs to the fraudsters, and unfortunately, the money is gone. You have become a victim of what is known as a “safe account” scam.
Sometimes, the scammers will conduct a different type of ‘safe account’ scam and may also explain that, to protect your account, you are required to read out security codes to them. These will come through as text messages to your phone, again through spoofing the bank’s number.
These codes are, in fact, one-time passcodes that are used to authorise payments. This is the scammers making payments from your account without your knowledge, tricking you into reading out the codes for the payments to go through. These payments are unauthorised and should always be refunded by the bank under unauthorised fraud reimbursement rules.