Customer invests life savings in fraudulent investment company

Peter had to take early retirement to care for his sick wife. He decided to invest his life savings to secure their future. He thought he was buying the bonds of an extremely well-known British bank through a reputable international investment company after seeing an opportunity online. The email address looked vaguely like it might be from the reputable company i.e. some of the letters copied its name. A person saying they worked for the company got in touch with Peter by email. Peter also got to speak with them on the phone from what looked like a Dublin number. Peter was sent an application form and an invoice with bank details of where to send the funds.

The invoice looked genuine. The bank details were the details of an account with a well-known British high street bank, but the company name on the account was not the name of the international investment company.

Over two weeks, Peter lodged €100,000 into the account, on the promise of a return of 7.5% on a quarterly basis. Peter got an email from the 'investment' firm, confirming receipt of the money. However, on the due date, Peter did not receive the expected returns. His attempts to contact the company failed and his emails bounced back. The loss of their life savings had a huge physical and mental impact on Peter and his wife – they were distraught.

Peter alerted his own bank to the fraud. It reached out to the British bank into which the funds had been lodged but were informed that the account was now empty. Peter made a complaint to his bank about them not questioning his many large transfers as they were happening.

In mediation, Peter's bank acknowledged that these were very unusual and out of character transactions for him, and in light of the fact it did not contact him about transfers in time to prevent the fraud, it agreed to refund him the lost funds and the complaint was closed.