Refundee recovers €43,000 for safe account scam victim
Published September 10, 2026
Our client was contacted by someone claiming to be from their bank, Lloyds. They told our client that there had been suspicious activity on their account and it had been compromised.
Our client was currently at work and felt panicked by the scammers, who told them they had to act immediately or they would lose the money in their account.
Our client, in a stressed state, checked their banking app and saw the attempted transactions on their account, which supported the scammers’ story.
They persuaded our client that they needed to act quickly by securing their account and moving their funds to a ‘safe account’. They were provided with an account to transfer the funds into, which they were told belonged to our client.
Our client transferred the funds, and the scammers told them that another member of the fraud team would be in touch to set up the account.
No one got in touch, and our client realised they had transferred the money to an account that was not safe at all.
How Refundee built the case for recovery
- Step 1 - Investigation: Our team conducted a thorough investigation to establish what happened, gathering necessary evidence for the claim.
- Step 2 - Utilising FR banking regulations for Authorised Push Payment Fraud, we constructed detailed arguments for why the bank should bear liability for the loss.
- Step 3 - Financial Ombudsman escalation: We escalated the case to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), presenting our evidence and regulatory arguments to make the case for full reimbursement.
Result: €43,000 recovered for our client
Scammers posing as Lloyds called our client at work, claiming their account had been compromised. Attempted transactions in the banking app backed up the story, so our client moved their money to a so-called safe account. We escalated to the Financial Ombudsman and recovered the full €43,000.
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