lansbury

Seems the scammers have latched on to a way of scamming money transfers.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/ka...ine-lost-168k/

philat98

Its a good thing. TW will have to up their game.

Jerseygirl

Why am I not surprised? We have never used any of the ‘transfer money’ web sites We only transfer money bank to bank.

scot47

Bank to bank is what I have always done. For smaller sums I use Western Union or Moneygram. These other sites like Transferwise always seemed risky to me.

Giantaxe

Article is behind a paywall.... what is the scam?

vespucci

I feel safer using Transferwise than a bank, and would rather use them even if a bank offered the same rate. I'm not comfortable doing a large transfer in one go- Transferwise doesn't penalize you on the rate if you split it up and do repeat transfers, whereas banks do.

philat98

https://archive.is/4SI4f

scot47

She spoke to someone on the phone who she thought was the real deal from TW. The guy transferred her £160,000 - to his own account. She was left broke.

Giantaxe

So not really something specific to the manner of Transferwise as opposed to a bank - banks have also been targeted by these scam support website/phone number scams. What is disturbing is the way Transferwise tried to avoid responsibility and offered derisory compensation. It shouldn't have taken a national newspaper getting involved for them to act responsibly and this person to get their money back.

lansbury

I don't agree it was Transferwise's responsibility to refund the money. They were not part of the scam, or even the perpetrator connected to them but just someone using their name. If someone steals money from you using my name I sure wouldn't refund you. The victim and her son have more fault for what happened than do Transferwise.

Giantaxe

Not sure how this would have played out had this gone the legal route. The article says Transferwise knew about the fake site and did nothing to warn customers, nor tell them generally how to protect personal information. That's different from some other financial sites I have accounts at. Oth, I do agree that this person bears at least some responsibility in the way they let themselves be scammed. But, even leaving aside the legal standpoint, it would have been a bad look for the Transferwise business if people scammed like this had not been recompensed.

SpoogleDrummer

Exactly, it's like blaming the victim of identity theft and expecting them to pay the debts in their name. The woman googled a number as was fooled by a fake site, if she'd acted responsibly and bookmarked the site used to initiate the transfer she wouldn't have had a problem. You can't expect Transferwise and Banks to alert people of every fake site that pops up, by now it should be a given that there are fake sites out there and it's it to the consumer to be cautious.

tdrinker

If you have a large sum to transfer, always transfer a small amount first and check the funds arrived, whether using Transferwise, a payment direct from your bank account, or another method. People buying houses have sent the purchase funds to a scammer not their lawyer when false bank details were sent via hacked email accounts, and there's numerous other scams. It's also possible to make a typo when setting up a transfer, and have the funds go astray.

It's easy with hindsight to say what the victim should have done, but some scammers are very experienced and clever in identifying and exploiting weaknesses (who hasn't been ripped off, or the victim of a crime that could have avoided with hindsight?), and can especially prey on older people who may be less tech savvy or more trusting.

SpoogleDrummer

That's all well and good but it doesn't make Transferwise at fault here, obviously the scammers are the ones to blame but getting mad at Transferwise and blaming them is insane.

philat98

I just opened an account with transferwise. I sent some money to the wrong account number. I started looking for a support number to call on their website and it was pretty difficult to find. I ended up googling a phone number. Transferwise need to improve their website a bit. Luckily the money arrived into my account and I never called them. Probably low fees equals limited support.