I lost £150,000 on a fraudulent account the bank knew about

I'm desperate. A year ago I transferred £150,000 from my Virgin Money account to an account I thought was a one year fixed rate bond with Prudential. In fact, it belonged to fraudsters. I found out it was a fraud 12 months later when the deposit was due to expire.

Virgin Money refuses to refund me because they asked me to verify the beneficiary's account before authorizing the first payment. I duly checked the company registration number, which belonged to Prudential, and called Prudential customer service to confirm that it was a real company.

If lay customers were always able to successfully verify they were dealing with fraudsters, there would never be fraud! I was not used to investing large sums of money and was only asked to verify company details once before making the first of seven payments to a Bank account of America.

I have since discovered that M&G (Prudential's parent company) reported this account as fraudulent to Bank of America three days before I made my first payment, and 17 full days before making the last one. If the account had been frozen, I would not have lost my savings.HTY, Ashtead, Surrey

You desperately lost your savings to of what is known as a clone investment scam. Criminals create fake businesses using the name, address and company reference number of reputable brands and can send sales brochures linking to the websites of the real companies. Only the most watchful eye would notice the difference between email and phone number.

Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulator warns that even experienced investors could be fooled. The brochure of the company that scammed you is sophisticated and convincing, and you were then prepared by many well-scripted phone calls and emails to gain your trust. After paying the money, you received genuine looking certificates and logged into a personal account portal.

Worryingly you say you searched proactively seeking investment opportunities with Prudential, rather than responding to an ad, which suggests your internet search may have landed on a cloned website.

The most major UK banks have signed up to the conditional refund model, which promises to reimburse defrauded customers who have not been unduly negligent. M&G's fraud department has confirmed to you in an email that in their opinion you were not negligent due to the sophistication of the scam.

Virgin Money, however, insists you were. It states: “Our fraud prevention systems successfully blocked the requested payment. We asked him to make sure the company he was paying was genuine and warned him that if it turned out to be a scam, it was unlikely that we would be able to recover the funds.

“We only released the payment at his specific request once he confirmed that he had made those checks and was happy funds are released. Unfortunately it turned out to be fraudulent and we are unable to support the refund request. »

According to M&G, it is extremely rare for payments to be made in new investments. obligations to make in a number of transactions, yet despite its initial concerns about the beneficiary, Virgin allowed you to make six transfers of almost £25,000 each, and a seventh of £982, in the space of 14 days , without further warnings.

It indicates that once you confirmed that the account was verified, it considered it a trusted beneficiary. But it appears that Bank of America authorized the scam.

The criminals siphon stolen funds through bank accounts they either "borrowed" from a legitimate customer, or created themselves.

Financial institutions have a responsibility to ensure that their services are not exploited for money laundering purposes, and it is alarming that 17 days after Prudential reported the account to be fraudulent, it was still in operation. Bank of America agreed to investigate, but has since ignored my requests for comment. However, he has decided to refund you the full amount.

As scams proliferate and evolve, none of us can be certain that we won't be duped in the same way. The FCA publishes useful advice on how to spot a scam, including checking its warning list and remembering that the higher the promised returns, the more dodgy the deal is likely to be. dcr-18sg7f2">My combi boiler uses a remote thermostat to control the central heating. If that doesn't work, neither does the heating. A tiny part of the battery holder has broken meaning the batteries won't work. have no longer been in contact with the terminals A new thermo...