Scams: How to spot them, handle them and protect yourself

0:01You know what I love, Damo? Things that save me time. You don't have YouTube Premium, mate, so I just don't believe that. Granted, I'll give you that one. However, I've got one for you. A great time saver in personal finance is Money Week magazine. They spend a lot of time distilling the biggest stories in personal finance down into consumable chunks, so you don't have to scroll and scroll. They give practical tips on savings, investments, pensions, the UK economy, the global economy. It's like your five a day, but for finance. If you want to give Money Week a try, you can get six issues in print and the app absolutely free by visiting moneyweek.com forward slash money.

0:34After your trial, you'll save an extra£5 a quarter on the subscription, which is exclusive to Making Money listeners. And that's moneyweek.com forward slash money. But there's a link in the description if you just want to click that.

0:49It's one of the biggest myths of scams and frauds is that, you know, I'm too clever to be scammed. You know, I do this for a living and I don't think I'm too clever to be scammed. Katie Morley is consumer champion for The Telegraph. She's won back around£10 million for scam and fraud victims, including those who should have been protected but weren't. What would you do if you were scammed? Do you know what kinds of things banks look for when evaluating who should get their money back? Last year I was invited to Number 10 to talk about fraud because it's become such a big issue in this country.

1:23And I think we all know deep down we need to be more aware of the techniques used to target us and our rights if we fall victim. And that's what makes me so cross because it shouldn't be down to me really to do this. The one thing that shocked me is, and we'll get into some of the specific stories, is just how many people fall victim to this and how many of them are quote unquote normal people. I think the stat I've got here is that the Financial Conduct Authority say that 27.7 million adults are vulnerable. Yeah. Which is like half of the UK population almost. Yeah, it's like a staggering amount.

2:00But I think it's important to say that like anyone can be vulnerable and that can happen at like different times in their life. So like if I think about the times when I've personally been vulnerable, after I had a baby, I was in a lot of pain, sleep deprived, I would have been classed as vulnerable at that point. But right now I'm not. So it just depends if you've been bereaved, if you're ill, if you've, you know, got a divorce or some sort of traumatic life event going on, then the bank, you know, banks or financial institutions could class you as vulnerable. Why do the FCA think it's important to track the amount of vulnerable people in the UK?

2:33It's because banks and financial institutions have to protect and do more to protect vulnerable customers. So people that need more support than the general population. And that's something that isn't optional for them. They have to do it under the regulations. So, yeah, I always thought, I think most people think that you only get scammed if you're dumb and you reply to an email and someone's promising you money. and then you sign up for it and then you lose loads of money. But you're saying that it can be just different stages of your life. You could not be vulnerable this month, but in two months something happens and then that can make you a vulnerable.

3:07It's one of the biggest myths of scams and frauds is that I'm too clever to be scammed. I do this for a living and I don't think I'm too clever to be scammed. And if you think that you're too clever to be scammed, then you're automatically in a camp of people that are actually probably more at risk of being scammed. it's a weakness actually to think this could never happen to me um so although most people are unlikely to fall for it at any given time it really depends on the situation and often the cases that I see the people that I speak to are incredibly lucid intelligent individuals it could be my neighbor or somebody like you know somebody that I know and I think to myself how have you fallen for this but then when you actually dig down into what what actually happened and when and what was going on in their life at the time, I'd say like nine times out of 10, it is because they've been vulnerable at that moment or there's been a sort of unlucky set of circumstances that has led up to that moment of the scam.

4:08One of the stories that stood out was a woman who took medication and that basically made her vulnerable. This was one of the most staggering cases that I've ever come across. And I think it turned out to be the biggest win that I've ever had. this lady sort of had a dream life she was sort of living in a two million pound house working in public relations had the family living the dream she then went through a divorce and she also had parkinson's disease which is an awful awful illness and she was on this horrible medication called rapinarol and that has a few very strange side effects one of them is it can it can cause people to have a much higher sex drive it can cause people to sort of have a bigger risk profile.

4:52So to gamble where they wouldn't normally or sort of take risks and be, you know, irresponsible where normally they'd be completely responsible person. And unfortunately for her, she sort of, it was the latter. She sort of had this extra appetite for risk. And she responded to an advert where this company said, invest 250 pounds and you can and make some money. And she got sucked into that. And over the course of five years, she gave them 829 pounds. She believed she - 1 ,000. Sorry, 829 ,000 pounds. Yeah, so nearly a million pounds. Wow. And that was like money from her divorce settlement. And she believed she was going to be given an annuity that would give her 20 ,000 pounds a month for the rest of her life.

5:42but obviously it was a complete scam and this person got away with all the money. She then complained to her bank Barclays and they kind of pushed her away and she just sat on this for a really long time. She was deteriorating in health, she was struggling to pay the bills, you know food on the table like that level of poverty basically. She had nothing and she reached me wasn't particularly coherent it was handwritten um i looked at it and i sort of thought i don't know what's behind this but somebody this person's not okay um and i spoke to her and sort of got the story and went to barclays and the way that i approached it was to i got her to get a doctor's note to prove that she was on this medication obviously kind of like talking to her at length figured out that she was on this medication she didn't sort of she wasn't forthcoming with it all I had to kind of extract it all out of her she would never in a million years have thought to tell Barclays that she was on this medication um but because I knew how how Barclays assesses these cases and how to get people their money back from scams because I know the processes that the bank used I made sure that I extracted all the information from her that Barclays needed to see in order to refund the 829 ,000 pounds.

7:08So she got all her money back in the end and she just couldn't believe it. I mean, to her, this was the difference between having a secure roof over her head, having the care that she needed to for the rest of her life, dealing with the Parkinson's. Like she was needing proper care at this point and not being able to afford it. So like, I mean, she still messages me sometimes to kind of check in and she's just so grateful that she just couldn't believe it. You're like a financial superhero. But how much do banks normally cover? I mean, this is where I wanted to go with the question in a way, because it's like, how much should they cover?

7:44You know, and it's hard for them, because how would they know that you're on these tablets? No, they wouldn't. Yeah, they wouldn't. And that's the thing. It's sort of, it is up to the customer, you know, if they do get scammed, it is up to them to complain in the right way to the bank. And unfortunately, because most of the people that have lost big money in these scams are vulnerable, they might not be in the position to put forward a good case, which is kind of where I come in. The doctor should say something. The medical professional should say this kind of drug is... It's almost like, it sounds like she had like bipolar...

8:19Well, you know, my auntie's bipolar and she would be reckless and spend and then come out of it and be like, oh God, I don't know what just happened. Yeah, exactly. She wasn't in control of fractions. Once she was off the medication, she was okay and she wasn't doing this anymore. The kids said they got their mother back. Yeah, exactly. They felt they got mommy back and it's heartbreaking, isn't it? But by the time she was loosed again, it was too late and she'd already done it all. If it was something like a bereavement, would you also be able to get, like if they lost their partner, someone lost their partner or like they lost a child and then they made a bad financial decision after, would that be grounds to potentially get their money back or is it only because it was medical and it affected her decision-making?

8:56It's not just medical. There's a whole range of things that would potentially class you as vulnerable. But it is basically done. These decisions are made by banks on a case-by-case basis. So it's subjective. They have like a criteria, but it's not exhaustive. So like I could put, you know, they wouldn't want to kind of rule out. There could be a million different situations that could render somebody vulnerable. So instead of having a list, it's sort of like, well, you've presented your case. Does it meet our criteria? It's things like, one of the key things is if it would, if the vulnerability or the thing would impair your judgment and your decision making.

9:39Because what they're looking for is somebody who wasn't in control of their decisions at the time. And if you're bereaved and in the depths of grief, then arguably you weren't thinking straight. And I think like generally in society, we would want people in that situation to be covered. One is interesting because like one of the, whenever I publish a scam story, there's usually like two camps of people that are commenting on the story or sending me feedback on email. One camp is, oh, I'm so glad that you did that for that person, I'm so grateful. Thank you so much. That person really deserved their money back.

10:16And then there's people who say, I'm a shareholder in Barclays, I'm paying for this. That person shouldn't have been so stupid. But like generally I think as a society, we do want to look after the vulnerable, don't we? I think there does come a point of personal responsibility though. And I would never want to kind of say that anyone should be covered by this because some people are reckless and they don't have a good excuse. And that, you know, is unfortunate for them. And we don't want to live in a world where we're not encouraging personal responsibility. But I think where people's lives have been devastated by these scams and where they are vulnerable, then we should put it right.

10:55I did some like fraud stuff with some fraud. Yeah. Some light fraud, you know, I did. It was, it was around number 10 and the current government wanted to input some anti-fraud prevention measures because it, it, it came about that basically say the Germans and stuff were pursuing fraudsters more aggressively than we were. And that was pushing into, cause these fraud networks are international. so it was pushing them away from Germany into the UK because they saw us as a soft target and they said that one of the things was if we're too loose in refunding everyone it just attracts the fraudsters to our market because they just know we can scam people they'll get the money back you know we have to be really careful in that sense of how lenient we are in terms of refunding people because you make people you make reckless almost yeah but but banks banks can use that argument, in reality, they have huge resources and technologies at their fingertips.

11:52And some of the basic errors that I see from the banks in terms of not calling people, the algorithms failing, not putting protections in place to stop fraud. So I think we have to be slightly careful in that that point is completely true. And banks have a really tough job on their hands to decipher, you know, if they're being gamed by fraudsters and if they're being too who lacks some forsters and if that's actually perpetuating problem, it is completely, that is completely an argument. But I do feel like the banks used that argument to detract from their own failings. So I agree that people who've been scammed should get their money back, but I just want to play devil's advocate.

12:32As a corporation, how much responsibility do they have? In the same sense of Instagram, right? I'm not getting my money back if I buy a scam on that platform right now. And I bought a mirror the other day and it never showed up. and having scammed. Oh yeah. And they should do more, but there's definitely more of a societal pressure on banks than there is say on a meta to resolve those kinds of issues. It's not even societal, it's regulatory. So the social media platforms are not regulated in the same way. It is like a huge black hole in terms of where scammers lie and where scammers are doing things in social media.

13:09It needs more regulation in my view. The difference between social media platforms and the banks is that the banks are regulated by the FCA. And the FCA mandates them to keep customers' money safe. And they have to do that in lots of different ways. And particularly relating to vulnerable customers as well are mandated to keep vulnerable customers safe and take extra precautions to keep them safe. So that's kind of where it's all coming from. And they have all signed up to like a voluntary code as well, which is to do with giving scam victims their money back. So they've kind of voluntarily said, we will do this.

13:48And then to see some of them rowing back on that quite sneakily is very galling for somebody like me who sits there. And is that what you see? You see them kind of trying to dodge that responsibility? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think WITCH has done research on this and certain banks are very good. So I think TSB is one of the best. They refund about nine in 10 scam victims. But NatWest is one of the worst. And that 100 % reflects my inbox as well. Whenever I've dealt with NatWest, I am having to fight tooth and nail to get anything out of them. And often, even after I've been like done everything I can, exhausted everything, I've had to say, I'm sorry, this has to go to the financial ombudsman now because I can't do anything further.

14:36The case has then gone to the ombudsman, which is, it's like an independent arbiter of these disputes. They then win with the ombudsman. So it shouldn't be having to get to that stage basically. That's the last resort, right? It's the last resort. Also as well, if the ombudsman contacts a bank, they get charged and stuff. And we used to do this with PPI and things like that when I worked in finance. and it was like if you had to refer it to that stage, the bank's getting charged again. So you shouldn't have to go to that point. That must be cultural then. So that's coming from the top or the director level where they're basically saying we're stricter on this.

15:13Yeah, they're deciding they're stricter. Because as I said, it's case by case basis on these scams. It goes kind of to a panel of judges and they look at the case in the round and they chat about it and they make a decision. Now, I've never sat in on one of these meetings, but I would love to be a fly on the wall and know what goes on. but that's how they decide. So it is subjective at the end of the day. So someone who's been scammed, who's listening, what are the kind of things that you think, these are some points that you could use or these are the things that the bank are looking for in terms of getting money back?

15:43So if you've been scammed and you're trying to complain to the bank to get the money back, the things that you need to really think about are, what did the bank, what did you do and what did the bank do? Or what could it have done more? so could the bank have provided you with more warnings as to what was going on were you making like say you usually spend i don't know 20 pounds a day and suddenly 5 000 pounds a day leaving your account did the bank ring you and say what was that for did they provide you with written warnings did they you know what did they do because if they didn't do anything then it's likely that the algorithms failed and that you would have that that would go in your favor um the other thing is are you vulnerable or is there anything that would make you know help your case in that sense so are you bereaved recently are you do you have mental health issues are you on medication that's having side effects or that could impair your thinking um is there any other factors going on think outside the box is there anything else that has meant that has led up to you doing this and make sure that you raise an official complaint and that you're filling in the form to be refunded under the it's this is like the most geeky unrememberable name ever but it's the contingent reimbursement model and and maybe research that in in advance as well maybe because that you know that there are documents online that that show you what they're looking for and explain how it all works so familiarize yourself with that if there's lots of money at stake it's worth spending you know a couple of days preparing this really and do you do you think like when they get a call off you they're like oh god because you know you know what you're doing you know i know i know i know what a consumer champion is but to be honest if i'd been scammed i wouldn't think to have contacted you necessarily and it might be your most avid readers and i wonder how many people just get a no and then wonder off that actually would have got their money back if they knew what they were doing yeah exactly and that's what makes me so cross um because it shouldn't be down to me really to to do this last time we recorded to me and you were having some real dramas with your accountant so how's that been going mate they're sacked so drama sorted um they're a big corporate firm um they didn't really reply to my emails very quickly like took a week or two at times um and they charged me way too much.

18:14I mean, I've got pretty simple taxes and yeah, they were charging me thousands. They saved me some money, but yeah, I had to move on. Slow and expensive. Pretty much, yeah. This is one of the reasons that we're really happy to be partnering with TaxApp. It's a tech platform that makes self-assessment simple. Whether you're self-employed like me, a freelancer or a director like Demo, big dog. Instead of sending endless emails, bills and spreadsheets to your accountant, you just connect your bank, answer a few questions that are only relevant to you, and your tax return can be ready in as little as 15 minutes.

18:41TaxApp is really easy to use and it's HMRC recognised software. So it's safe, secure and legit. The price is also decent. So if you're self-employed with one income stream, it's just£89 as a one-off fee. No big accountancy fees. And we also have a discount code, of course. If you need to file a self-assessment this year, give TaxApp a try. We've left a link in the description and use the code MONEY10 for 10 % off your first tax filing. That code is MONEY, M-O-N-E-Y 1-0. So Mr. O 'Carolet, I hear you are a salesman. Elite salesman, yes. One of the best, they say? I've got a little bit of experience in the game, yeah, I could say.

19:17You've done a few deals. Bill, Bill. What would your compliance team say about you? They would say that I am always nagging them and that essentially I just have beef with compliance. I love the team. Compliance slows down all my deals because every time I get to the finish line, they've got to check documents, KYC, GDPR, and it's just a nightmare. It slows the deal down by like two, three weeks. It's always on both sides as well, isn't it? Sometimes it can be blocked on the other side. Well, that's where today's sponsor can help. Indeed. Vanta helps companies of all sizes get secure and compliant fast.

19:51And they stay that way. They do it by automating compliance with over 35 security and privacy frameworks like SOC2, ISO 27001 and HIPAA. Yeah, all of them. And this saves businesses so much time and money. According to a recent IDC study, Vanta customers save over half a million dollars a year in costs. Not bad. And they also help you complete security questionnaires up to five times faster, which is great because everybody hates filling out forms. If you're a business that needs to prove security and compliance, visit Vanta.com forward slash making money to sign up for a completely free demo today.

20:25That's Vanta.com forward slash making money. There's a link in the description though, so you can just click that. That's what was most shocking about reading your work is there's two elements to this. There's getting scammed and then there's the company itself not fulfilling its obligation to help people that are scammed. It's almost like you've got two battles. You're getting scammed twice almost. Yeah, exactly. Conned out your money twice. I'd say that it kind of falls into a few different camps. Like on the most extreme, it's kind of companies like deliberately lying to customers, deliberately getting money out of them for goods that they know that they don't have, essentially conning them.

21:04And I do see cases like that, but it is rare. Like generally companies do try and offer decent services. Most of the cases that fall into my inbox kind of fall into this middle ground of like just poor customer service where it's like laziness or just, you know, jobs worth type customer service people that just rely on terms and conditions and don't think about things in a real way. and generally those are quite easy to put right but then sometimes you do have companies that dig the heels in and just are quite happy to offer a terrible service and treat customers in a terrible way and that's obviously really disappointing but those companies usually get what they deserve later down the line when they go bust.

21:53And what's if someone feels that you know I've been scammed I was vulnerable and the company I don't feel is upholding their end of the bargain or fulfilling their duties what what's the process that they should go through yeah so if you feel that you've been treated unfairly by a company the first thing to do is obviously raise it with the company in question so um the way to get your voice heard initially every company will have their own complaints process and that will depend on what sector they're in so energy sector will have different process to banking sector to retail sector, but everything should be there on the company website.

22:26So raise an official complaint. There's nothing wrong with using the word official at any point because it will get you heard. That is a bit of a magic word in the world of complaining. So make sure that you raise it with the right people as well. So if you've emailed customer services and you're not getting anywhere with that, you could try copying in the CEO, chief executive, or somebody more senior in company and often you can find those details on company websites um you can find them on websites like ceo.com um they're generally available on the internet somewhere sometimes you have to be creative about how you find things um so so kind of trying to escalate things within companies the next stage is to kind of go a bit wider and see if you can get your voice heard elsewhere if things aren't working with an internal complaint so uh posting things on social media for example if you're posting something on Twitter X, you could copy in people like me, Martin Lewis, like other sort of people that might be relevant in this area that kind of might make the company set up and listen and think, oh no, you know, we might be in the media if we don't sort this out.

23:34That's always a good way of getting, you know, even if I didn't respond, for example, it's still worth doing. And you can always reach out to a consumer champion like me, of course. but obviously we, there are a few of us, like most newspapers have got one but we are only able to deal with like a relatively small number of cases. But what I always say is like, you can use my name. You can say, I, you know, sometimes I get people emailing saying, I threatened to tell Katie Morley of the Telegraph and I got 5 ,000 pound compensation. That has happened. So like, you might as well try it and you can copy me in as well.

24:12You can use my email and just CC me into complaint emails. If I would say, don't do that as a sort of initial thing, only do it if it's really not working. And sometimes just the sight of that will get companies to do the right thing. Do you see much from gambling? Yes. I used to work in the debt management industry and we get calls from typically women, like these types of calls from women. And normally it would be say a Muslim woman and she would be like, I need help. I've like gambled all the money away in the house on bingo. And if my husband finds out, like I fear for my life or something like this, you know, and we would have to call the police.

24:52These are just three or four times it's happened for me. But I was thinking like, we would see the emails and the bingo companies like you haven't been here for two days, have 10 % off or whatever, you know? And I was like, how is that not a scam? Like they're just extracting the money out of these poor people that - Yeah, some of the tactics used by the gambling companies are disgraceful, they really are. How is it not a scam? Yeah. It's a rigged game. In my view, it shouldn't be allowed to be advertised. And I personally think that it's just, it's such a scourge on society, isn't it? I do see quite a few people coming through that have gambled huge amounts of money on gaming and - The digital stuff.

25:42Yeah, like online game. They can't escape it. Those online fruit machine things as well. And those gambling companies know full well that they make all of their money - 90 % from 1%. Yeah, off the 1 % that have a problem and that have like given their life savings because they can't stop or whatever. So it really is just disgusting industry. so I've had a fair few highly vulnerable gambling cases where I've won back big amounts of money for them I've been really happy to do that because I just think it's been really clear that there's been like a pattern of them being targeted but I have had cases where people come to me and they say oh I'm vulnerable or my partner's vulnerable and they've gambled and can we get our money back and then when I've looked into it they're kind of trying to have their cake and eat it a little bit because they have won before.

26:34And so, and then they've lost. And then they're coming to me saying, we want our money back. They don't like it when they've lost. So it's like, well, you can't keep the winnings and get your money back on the losses. So then I'm like, no. You know, in court, when they say someone's not in compass mentis, like you're not aware of sound mind. So maybe you're drunk or you're on drugs. Do you ever get that? Someone's like, I got really drunk at the football. And then I was like going home and I saw an advert for - This is T's excuse. A friend I might know. And then it's like, I got really drunk and then I ended up betting on like Filipino division four football at 2am, someone I know.

27:11And then you lost loads of money because you weren't in sound mind. And you're like, if I was sober and I hadn't been out of football all day, I wouldn't have gambled at 3am on Filipino. Yeah, yeah. Do you ever get people like that? Like I wasn't, yeah. Yeah. Do you ever win from those? No. Because what I would do is just sort of look at them and just not take it on. but occasionally I see one and I think, do you know what? I'm gonna run that. And I'm gonna say very politely why I'm not gonna help you because I think it's important that people - Don't just see me as like a meal ticket that I'll just do anything for anyone because I just won't, that's not true.

27:47But when you see wins every week, you do think it gives that impression. So I do sort of pepper in ones where people do get told no. Yeah. Yeah. Reading through one of the things that struck me, I've got a little section I want to read out if you want. I thought it was great journalism. First of all, it was like really impactful, but at the same time it was like the savagery of the scammer in terms of the emotional grip that they had on this person. So I'll just read out a section. In this story, there was a lady who for context had lost her husband. Her children really struggled with it. And one of them ended up in a psychiatric unit.

28:24She met someone else who then died three years later and she cared for them in death. And then she met someone online dating and there was this bit and it was, this is her to him. You seem to have invaded my whole existence. I'm thinking about you constantly. You're in my heart and on my mind every moment of the day, but I wouldn't have it any other way. To be honest, I never thought I'd meet anyone who could sweep me off my feet like you've done. Being no doubt my commitment to you will be forever. And then it was shortly after this, the scammer decided you were ready to be extorted out of every penny you had.