Later that month, she made a payment of $1,700 into her crypto wallet, which she authorised with a code sent to her phone. On 21 March, she made three more payments totalling $11,200. No codes were sent for these payments because she had previously authorised payments to the platform. On 27 March, the crypto platform alerted the bank about unusual activity, and the bank blocked Gwen’s internet banking and attempted unsuccessfully to recover funds. The bank has declined to reimburse Gwen’s loss, which totalled $21,100, on the basis that her banking records confirm she had initiated and authorised all the payments.

Our investigation

Gwen acknowledged making the payments between 11 March and 14 March. She had no contact with the bank during the time she made the payments, so the bank could not have had any reason to suspect the scam. The bank’s fraud monitoring system did not pick up any unusual activity on her accounts. There were no grounds for the bank to suspect a scam and investigate the payments, so it followed Gwen’s instructions to process the transactions. Gwen said she did not make the payments on 21 March. However, all payments were initiated and authorised using her phone from her usual IP address, and there were no failed attempts to log in. In these circumstances, we concluded, she was likely to have authorised all the payments.

Outcome

We did not uphold Gwen’s complaint.