16-22 March 2026
Victim loses €40,000 to online currency trading scam and continues to invest despite bank's warning
Joe found an investment opportunity on the internet where he believed that he was buying and selling currency. The fraudsters led him to believe he was looking at live investment pages where he himself could buy and sell currency. The fraudsters first asked Joe to pay them with cryptocurrency. Joe did not want to do this so instead they would send him invoices by email and Joe would pay them from his Irish bank account.
The fraudsters often approached Joe with “wonderful” opportunities or reached out to him in a rush looking for funds to keep one of his investments afloat. Occasionally, the fraudsters would send Joe funds of around €2,000 to keep up the illusion that these were legitimate investments with returns. When the fund reached €100,000 Joe asked to withdraw his money. Following this request, Joe got a call from the “Chief Financial Officer” of the company explaining that he would need to pay a broker fee and an early breakage fee of about €20,000.
Throughout the scam. Joe paid approximately €40,000 over 11 payments to different IBANs in several European countries. Joe paid the fees requested and when he received no funds, he realised he had been the victim of a scam and approached his bank. Joe wanted to know why his bank had not researched this company on his behalf and why they had allowed the payments to go through.
In mediation at the FSPO, it was discovered that two of the payments did actually trigger Joe’s bank to put a hold on them and phone him. It asked Joe about the company he was sending money to. He said he had researched them and that it seemed legitimate and were based in Cyprus. The bank agent asked Joe why he was transferring funds to France if the company was based in Cyprus. During their call, the agent was unable to find the French company online. The bank agent told Joe “that the payment had all the red flags of a fraud or scam.” Joe said he wanted to look into it himself. The agent said the bank would keep the hold on the payments and if it didn’t hear from Joe within 24 hours it would cancel the payments. Joe did not contact them within 24 hours, so these two payments were stopped. However, despite this call, Joe went on to make 7 more payments to the fraudsters.
Joe’s bank felt that he was responsible for the majority of the payments. However, it failed to call him again after another of the payments triggered its security system and then a second payment to the same IBAN failed to trigger its system. For this error the bank refunded those two payments. Joe accepted this offer, in the form of a Mediation Settlement and the complaint was resolved on this basis.