Action Fraud, the UK’s reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime, received almost 10,000 reports of fraud naming Revolut in 2023, according to a Freedom of Information request submitted by BBC Panorama. This figure outstripped the biggest banks in the UK.
Scammers tell victims to move money to Revolut
It all started with a text seemingly from Metro Bank, with which Nadia Vinokur (pictured above) from London holds a joint bank account with her husband.
She says: ‘The message referred to a transaction for £300, and asked if it was made by me. I replied “No”. I was in a stressful situation dealing with my son, who had a fever, and didn’t spot that it came from an unidentified number.'
Ten minutes later, Nadia received a call from a 'Metro Bank customer service representative'. He asked her to log in to her banking app, reassuring her that she did not need to hand over any personal details, where she noticed a transaction she didn’t recognise. He said he’d transfer her to the bank's fraud prevention team.
'Security checks'
The next person she spoke to claimed to be a Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) compliance officer. He sounded professional and calm, telling Nadia that her other banking apps had been targeted and that he’d do a security check by sending a verification code via text message from one of her other banks, NatWest.
When this came through, it matched NatWest’s real number and appeared in a genuine chain of messages with the bank.
With Nadia now hooked and panicking about her accounts, the fraudster made his move and instructed her to transfer money from NatWest to her Revolut account, which he said wasn’t compromised.
Once the money reached Revolut, she was told to move the funds to a new ‘safe’ NatWest bank account which has been set up for her. Nadia questioned this, but was given extensive explanations about FCA requirements and protection rules. She was told to use her first name and abbreviated surname to create a payee.
Revolut displayed a series of fraud warnings, but the caller knew these word for word and provided detailed explanations as to why she should ignore them.
'He told me to move money from my Citibank account too, but Citibank blocked the transfer and called to check it with me. I finally connected the dots, but it was too late,' she says.
Revolut's track record of failing fraud victims
Which? is disturbed by how often we speak to fraud victims who are tricked into moving money from their high street bank accounts to Revolut first, rather than directly to fraudsters’ accounts. But we're even more worried about how infrequently it refunds customers.
Revolut said it will not be reimbursing Nadia's losses because it put the first transfer on hold and asked a series of security questions and fraud warnings to protect her. But we think it's likely direct intervention – such as that of Citibank – could've put an end to the scam.
A Revolut spokesperson told Which?: 'We are very sorry to hear about Ms Vinokur’s case, or any instance where our customers are targeted by ruthless and highly sophisticated criminals. After identifying concerns with the attempted transactions, we placed the payments on hold and alerted Ms Vinokur.
'We then asked the customer if they were being guided and followed this up with a series of direct questions regarding the nature of the payments she was attempting to make. Based on the answers provided by the customer, we then shared a number of non-skippable educational warning messages to the customer.
'Before allowing the customer to proceed, we requested that the customer formally acknowledge that Revolut had warned her that this was likely a scam and that she understood the risk of losing her money.
'Unfortunately on this occasion our warnings were not heeded and the customer confirmed that she wished to proceed, so we processed the payment in line with our legal and regulatory obligations.'
Find out more:New protections came too late
Nadia has escalated her fraud complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, though her case is yet to be assigned an investigator due to a backlog of cases.
She is upset that she missed out on stronger protections under the new mandatory reimbursement scheme for APP fraud, in place since 7 October 2024.
This scheme means any firms providing Faster Payments in the UK – so most banks, building societies and e-money firms, including Revolut – must follow new rules to reimburse victims of APP fraud.
Find out more:source https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/revolut-bank-transfer-scam-aryj55l66MBL