Gloria Hunniford: ‘Unquestionably, banks can do more to stop scams’

We also need to look at con artists who sell ponzi and pyramid schemes

No firms want to pay for security because it doesn’t add value, therefore it is treated as an overhead and if you can reduce overheads that is good, so we may have a race to the bottom because of this. The security industry I believe has the lowest qualification requirements and pay of any…

It is so true when Gloria said it was easier for the scammers to get her money than if Gloria herself wanted to access it.
I am with Santander and they will ring you about something but not before you have given all your details such as date of birth. I refuse to give this as what proof are they giving me that they are really Santander? They tell me lots of customers feel like this and advise you to ring the bank direct but it is ridiculous. I simply cannot see how Gloria’s scam could happen and the bank should offer some sort of explanation.

Hopefully Which?’s super-complaint to the Payment Systems Regulator [see the Conversation entitled Do you support our super-complaint on scams? (23/09/2016)] will tease out what more banks could realistically do to make themselves impregnable to external fraud, as well as (a) why they haven’t done it already, and (b) when they will do it.

I bank with Santander but am disillusioned with their policy of putting account holders log-in identification number on statements.
When I queried it I was told it was NOT a security issue as there are 2 more levels of security before access is gained.

We have in the UK the world’s oldest “police force” – the Royal Mail investigation branch. They are so good that nobody d***s around with the mail without being caught. As far as I can gather they pursue any wrongdoers remorselessly and never give up – Like the Mounties they always get their man. Unlike other enforcement agencies they don’t do “easiology” and the result is that you and I take items which may have a lot of value to us one way or another (including financial stuff you wouldn’t put into a computer or a telephone and stuff that you would think twice about trusting a friend or even a member of family to look after) a and bung it into a tin box in the middle of nowhere with complete confidence that it is safe without even thinking about it.
Banks used to be like this, until they switched into easy option mode (easiology) along with most of the agencies that are supposed to keep us on the straight and narrow. Perhaps all of these outfits should be re-trained by royal mail staff.

These scams could be made much more difficult to operate if it wasn’t so easy to open a bank account. I remember when I opened my first bank account I had to give the bank three signatures for security reasons, checking while processing cheques, setting up direct debits, and various other forms that had to be filled in to make any change to an account. These days because the banks have been allowed to drop these security checks because they just would not be able to operate mobile banking if they had to check signaturies for these sort of things. People that are not even known by the account holder can walk into a bank and produce some sort of ID that remotely connects them to the account holder and do this sort of thing. If the government tightened the banking regulations and went back to more documentary evidence instead of all this electronic online, on the move attitude you would make it almost impossible for some of these scams to be operated.

The banks have obviously got to do a lot more to reassure customers that security is paramount at every level. We should bear in mind, though, that 99.9% of transactions go through correctly and that very few people lose any money provided they have not contributed in some way to the loss or been affected by criminal activity. Even in those cases banks must give full and proper consideration to any claims of malpractice. In the Gloria Hunniford case her bank clearly accepted that there was no contribution to the loss on her part and that the bank was targetted by a crime that its own procedures allowed to happen as well as a possible insider contribution to the crime. As you say, Mr Drew, weak ID control was a feature in this case and an apparent lack of any other form of corroboration. You would think that adding four signatories to a savings account would be such an unusual occurrence that more senior personnel would be involved. It has not been reported whether any ID was required to be produced by each of the four additional signatories – probably not because the transaction was commenced by the woman who, using a forged licence, purported to be Ms Hunniford in her married name of Mrs Gloria Way and was accepted as such. There are still some details of this case that presumably cannot be made public for obvious security reasons. Presumably the perpetrator felt it was useful to add four signatories to the account so that the attack on Gloria’s account could be executed rapidly and from different sources.

I know of one lady whose fraudulent Husband and Santander Bank went and allowed the Husband (now in Australia in a Chief Financial Officer role there, formerly MD of a Company in GB) to forge the Wife’s signatures and details and take out a £350,000 fraudulent Mortgage!! Financial Ombudsman Service Office absolutely useless “oh – not Santander’s fault, Husband’s fraud!!” Yet Santander and their so called Agents had never once asked to see the Lady personally, nor had the so-called Solicitors instructed on the Mortgage!! Now one enormous job trying to get the Divorce Courts to REMOVE THIS so called, totally fraudulent MORTGAGE from this Lady’s home!!!! RIP OFF BRITAIN!!!!