Dawn lost £1,000 to a fraudster who had contacted her in a messaging app pretending to be her daughter. Dawn reported the matter to her bank but they refused to refund her money. Unhappy with their response, she contacted us to make a complaint.
What happened
Dawn was at work. She was busy and was in-between tasks when she noticed a message on an app on her mobile phone. She didn’t recognise the number, but the message started ‘Hi Mum’.
Dawn’s daughter, Jane, was away at university at the time and often contacted her through this popular messaging app.
Dawn opened the message. The message said it was from her daughter. She had lost her phone and was using a temporary replacement phone to get in touch. After exchanging a few messages, Jane explained to her mother she was worried about a bill she was due to pay and asked whether Dawn could lend her some money.
Dawn agreed to make a payment of a little over £1,000 and was told that she’d need to pay the money into an account belonging to Jane’s friend
Jane explained that she was blocked from accessing her own bank account to either make or receive the payment as it was still linked to her old phone number on her bank’s records. Dawn knew that Jane accessed her bank account through her mobile phone so that explanation made sense to her.
Dawn was concerned for her daughter. Jane had lost her phone before and Dawn had also sent her money on other occasions recently, to help her out with other bills. There was nothing particular about the tone or style of the message that raised any alarm bells with Dawn. And the messages from Jane were quite emotional, as Jane said she was worried about paying the bill on time, so Dawn wanted to do something quickly to help her daughter.
During the messages, Dawn had asked Jane to call her but was told the microphone on the temporary replacement phone she had been given wasn’t working properly. After Dawn finished work, she sent a quick message to Jane to check whether she had managed to pay the bill on time - but by accident sent the message to Jane’s original number. When Dawn received a puzzled response from Jane, she began to worry about what had happened, and suspect that she’d been the victim of a scam.
Dawn reported the matter to her bank, but the bank said that it wouldn’t refund her money as she hadn’t taken any steps to verify that it really was Jane that was contacting her. So Dawn contacted us to make a complaint.
What we said
Given the circumstances, we understood why Dawn believed that the message had come from Jane. When we looked into Dawn’s complaint, we took into account the fact that the message contained a sense of urgency and that it had been received at a busy time – together, this had caught Dawn off guard. We also understood Dawn’s willingness to want to help her child out of a seemingly difficult position. This is exactly the environment the fraudster hoped to create.
Additionally, Dawn was able to show us that she had received similar requests from Jane, and that she’d previously sent money or covered the bill for things, including a replacement phone.
We considered that Dawn could have called the number to confirm it really was Jane, but we didn’t think her failure to do so, in all the circumstances, meant she lacked a reasonable basis for believing that she was communicating with her daughter. We also took into account that the fraudster had told Dawn the microphone on Jane’s temporary phone wasn’t working properly.
So, we didn’t think the bank had acted fairly in declining Dawn’s claim and asked it to refund her money in full.
Some ways to help protect yourself against a ‘Hi mum/dad’ message scam
- From the cases we see, popular messaging apps are the most common way for fraudsters to attempt this scam
- It’s natural to want to help people you care about. These scams are intended to take advantage of that and it’s why this particular scam often starts ‘Hi mum’ or ‘Hi dad’. But it only takes a minute to speak to someone over the phone. ALWAYS double-check you are in contact with who you think you are.
- If you really can’t speak to them – ask the sender to confirm something only they would know. If it’s a fraudster, it’s very unlikely they’ll have any actual knowledge of who they are impersonating. Another option is to ask for a voice note to be sent to you.
- Being pressured to act immediately is often the sign of a scam.