Barclays Bank UK PLC · DRN-6027745

The complaint Mr W complains that Barclays Bank UK PLC (‘Barclays’) won’t reimburse the funds he lost when he fell victim to a scam. What happened Both parties are aware of the facts of this case, and the investigator set them out in detail, so I’ll only cover them briefly here. Mr W says that he received contact from a number he didn’t recognise and started to exchange messages with someone I’ll call ‘M’ in this decision. A few days later, M said that she had become proficient in short term trading and had made good profit. M explained that her uncle was an analyst and that he let her know when it was a good time to trade. Mr W initially didn’t show great interest but as a relationship developed with M he was persuaded to open cryptocurrency accounts in his name and an account with another bank. The investigator set out all the payments Mr W made on the advice of the scammer. Most were to the cryptocurrency accounts he had opened but Mr W later transferred funds to his newly opened bank account and from there to cryptocurrency accounts – and on to a scammer. The payments were made between 12 July and 27 August 2024. Mr W realised he was the victim of a scam when he was unable to withdraw his funds. Through a professional representative, he reported what had happened to Barclays in December 2024. Barclays didn’t provide an answer to Mr W as it said he hadn’t provided a valid letter of authority or called to raise a claim. Barclays told this service that the loss was from accounts in Mr W’s name, not his Barclays account, that it provided relevant warnings which Mr W ignored, and that Mr W didn’t do enough to check the legitimacy of the investment opportunity. Mr W was unhappy with Barclays’ response and brought a complaint to this service. He said Barclays failed to do enough to protect him. The investigator who considered this complaint held Barclays partly responsible for Mr W’s loss. He said that after blocking a payment Barclays spoke to Mr W on 16 July 2024 but didn’t go far enough. The investigator felt that if Barclays had asked more questions and discussed how cryptocurrency scams work, it could have prevented his loss from the date of the call onwards. But the investigator felt that Mr W should share responsibility for his loss and that liability for the final two payments (for £3,500 and £2,000), that went from Mr W’s Barclays account to the bank account he opened on the instructions of scammers, should also be split between Barclays, the other bank and Mr W. Barclays accepted the investigator’s findings. But I didn’t agree that Mr W’s other bank should be held partly liable for the final transactions so this service asked Barclays if it would reimburse 50% of all payments from 16 July 2024. Barclays didn’t agree, so I am issuing this decision. It said that while it agrees with the principle of shared liability, it didn’t think it should be held more responsible than Mr W’s other bank, especially when the funds were transferred to an account in Mr W’s own name.

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What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. In deciding what’s fair and reasonable, I am required to take into account relevant law and regulations, regulators’ rules, guidance and standards, and codes of practice; and, where appropriate, I must also take into account what I consider to have been good industry practice at the time. Where evidence is unclear or in dispute, I reach my findings on the balance of probabilities – in other words on what I consider most likely to have happened based on the evidence available and the surrounding circumstances. In broad terms, the starting position at law is that Barclays is expected to process payments and withdrawals that a customer authorises it to make, in accordance with the Payment Services Regulations (in this case the 2017 regulations) and the terms and conditions of the customer’s account. But that’s not the end of the story. Taking into account relevant law, regulators’ rules and guidance, relevant codes of practice and what I consider to have been good industry practice at the time, I consider it fair and reasonable in July 2024 that Barclays should: • have been monitoring accounts and any payments made or received to counter various risks, including preventing fraud and scams; • have had systems in place to look out for unusual transactions or other signs that might indicate that its customers were at risk of fraud (among other things). This is particularly so given the increase in sophisticated fraud and scams in recent years, which firms are generally more familiar with than the average customer; • have acted to avoid causing foreseeable harm to customers, for example by maintaining adequate systems to detect and prevent scams and by ensuring all aspects of its products, including the contractual terms, enabled it to do so; • in some circumstances, irrespective of the payment channel used, have taken additional steps, or made additional checks, or provided additional warnings, before processing a payment; • have been mindful of – among other things – common scam scenarios, how the fraudulent practices are evolving (including for example the common use of multistage fraud by scammers, including the use of payments to cryptocurrency accounts as a step to defraud consumers) and the different risks these can present to consumers, when deciding whether to intervene. In this case, Barclays has accepted that it was partly responsible for payments made from 16 July 2024. Its concern is that the bank Mr W transferred funds to isn’t being held liable when it is. So I will only very briefly cover why I think Barclays didn’t do enough to protect Mr W and then go on to explain why I think liability should be split between Barclays and Mr W. Barclays spoke to Mr W on 16 July 2024. It had blocked Mr W’s account when he attempted to make a payment to an individual. During the call, Mr W described the payee as a trader but also said that nobody had been in touch with him asking him to invest. The funds were going to the trader as payments to Mr W’s cryptocurrency account were being blocked. Barclays’ fraud adviser said she had concerns and checked whether Mr W was sure he wasn’t the victim of a scam. The conflicting information wasn’t explored, Mr W wasn’t asked how he would use the cryptocurrency, or about his understanding of cryptocurrency trading. And, even though the Barclays fraud advisor expressed concerns, Mr W wasn’t given a good

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cryptocurrency investment scam warning to bring to life the key features of scams of this nature. The intervention by Barclays was at an early stage in the scam and I think that better intervention would have made a difference. Having read the chat messages Mr W exchanged with M, it’s clear he had some real concerns. On 17 July 2024 Mr W said that every time he convinced himself it’s a scam M had the ability to bring him round. On the same day he referred to the investment being fantastic and went on to say, “and most things that appear too good to be true are indeed too good to be true”. He mentioned a story he had read about someone who was contacted by a girl via a messaging app and ‘conned’ out of £400,000. So, I think that at this early stage of the scam, and given Mr W’s misgivings, if Barclays’ intervention had been more effective Mr W would have recognised the hallmarks of a scam (which, in this case was combined with a romance scam) and his further loss could have been prevented. For the reasons set out by the investigator in his view, which was accepted by both parties, I agree that Mr W should share responsibility for his loss. Briefly, Mr W placed a lot of trust in someone he had never met and with whom he first came into contact because of out of the blue communication from a wrong number, did no independent research, was told of too good to be true returns, and had no investment documentation. I have decided that Barclays should have uncovered the scam on 16 July 2024 and that had it done so, all further payments from Mr W’s account wouldn’t have been made. The point at which I think Mr W’s other bank should have had concerns was considerably later in the scam, at a point when Mr W had built a greater level of trust with the scammer and had received some scam warnings. I can’t go into further details here, but don’t think responsibility for any payments should be shared with Mr W’s other bank. Overall, I don’t think Barclays did enough to protect Mr W. It should reimburse 50% of his loss from 16 July 2024 onwards plus interest as set out below as Mr W has been deprived of the use of these funds. My final decision I uphold this complaint and require Barclays Bank UK PLC to: - Reimburse Mr W £12,579.45; and - Pay interest on the above amount at the rate of 8% simple per year from the date of each transaction to the date of settlement, less tax if lawfully deductible. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr W to accept or reject my decision before 24 April 2026. Jay Hadfield Ombudsman

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