Our investigation

We found three of the four payments were made within a 10-minute period. Then, two more payments were attempted but declined because there were not enough funds in Hudson’s account. Within a minute of the failed attempts, someone logged in to Hudson’s internet banking and transferred $500 to his credit card. A minute later, someone once more attempted to make the declined payment to the international payments service, and this time it was successful because $500 had been added to the balance. Hudson confirmed to us that he made the $500 payment. He said the $500 was related to a gift he had bought for his partner earlier in the week, and the timing of the payment was purely a coincidence.

We told Hudson the bank had strong grounds for concluding he had authorised the payments himself. We said it was difficult to arrive at any other conclusion than that the person who made the $500 payment was the same person who made the payments to the money transfer service. The timing was too significant to overlook unless he could provide strong evidence to support another version of events.

We told Hudson we could contact the money transfer service to request details of the device and IP address used to initiate the payments. However, if the money transfer service said that the payments had been made using Hudson’s phone and IP address, that would further support the bank's position.

Outcome

Hudson withdrew his complaint.