SALLY SORTS IT: Help! My friend lost £180,000 to Bitcoin conmen using Martin Lewis’s name

Our friend has been scammed out of £180,000 after responding to a fake Bitcoin trading ad on Facebook appearing to feature (misleadingly) money expert Martin Lewis.

This happened last December, but she recently asked me to help as I was a senior compliance officer at a leading bank before retiring to Spain.

I suggested she complain to Revolut because the scammer had persuaded her to open an account with this firm and made several payments into it. 

But Revolut will not accept her complaint, stating that she would have received online warnings. 

There were also multiple payments to a firm called Ibinex, which is not regulated in the UK. Her retirement hopes are in tatters. Can you help?

M.S., Spain.

Bit-con: A Bitcoin scammer cheated a reader’s friend out of £180,000 using a phoney advert featuring money expert Martin Lewis

Sally Hamilton replies: Perhaps one day I’ll stop receiving cries for help from victims of crypto scams, but sadly they are still coming in thick and fast, and will persist so long as convincing ads like the one your friend saw appear on social media.

People have been duped by phoney ads featuring Martin Lewis for several years. In a bid to stamp them out, he sued Facebook in 2018 for defamation and won £3 million, which he gave to a charity for fraud victims.

A recent BBC investigation rumbled a scam that was using his name (and those of other celebrities) to promote its dodgy practices. It is possible your friend fell into this net.

Your friend explained to me how just before Christmas, she saw the ad on Facebook showing pictures of Martin Lewis on the TV show Good Morning Britain and promising tips on how to trade. 

She clicked on a link which asked for her details, including a phone number. An ‘educational website’ called to say it could teach her how to trade in crypto for an initial investment of $250 (about £200).

An account manager called Austin King conversed with her over WhatsApp and asked her to download software called AnyDesk, which let him take control of her computer and open an account for her with Revolut.

She was then persuaded to open an account with crypto platform Binance. A few days later, $65 (£50) was transferred into her Revolut account — described by Austin as her profit so far. 

This technique is used to build trust, and it worked — giving her confidence to part with more money.

Soon afterwards, Austin called to warn your friend her account would collapse if she did not top it up. 

Although now anxious and suspicious, she sent yet more money, this time to Ibinex, an Estonian crypto website.

It was only when her funds had been drained that she finally woke up to the full extent of the deceit and reported the fraud, in March, to Revolut.

She told me: ‘I have lost all of our retirement money and my marriage is hanging in the balance. Every penny was worked hard for. There was no inheritance, no windfall. I am such an idiot.’

Although she should have spotted the danger signs sooner, I feel very sorry for her. Only those who have been trapped in such a sophisticated web of lies know how convincing such a fraud can be.

I was not satisfied with Revolut’s response. Money Mail reported recently that this firm, which offers current account services but is not yet a licenced bank in the UK, has featured in many fraud complaints, with criminals often convincing victims to open a Revolut account.

This might be because cryptocurrency purchases are permitted via Revolut, when some other banks have either banned or limited the sums that can be spent on the investment.

On my request, Revolut reopened your case to see if it could have done more to protect you.

Its response was not good news. Although the firm conceded your friend had been duped by ‘ruthless and highly sophisticated criminals’, it refused to reimburse her losses on the basis that she overrode two warnings.

She defended her actions, telling me the scammer had convinced her there was not a problem.

A Revolut spokesman says: ‘We take our responsibility to protect and support our customers extremely seriously and have made significant investments in our systems, processes and people to ensure our customers are safe.’Straight to the point 

Revolut states that financial institutions and banks are usually the last link in the chain, and that a fraud has already been committed before they are involved. 

This may be so, but I would argue they are also the last bastion of security for customers and should do more to protect innocent victims — and if this can’t be done, then to reimburse their losses.

I approached Lloyds Bank, where your friend held her current account from where the unusual spending pattern surely must have set off alarm bells. It turned out she had not complained to Lloyds because she had felt it was Revolut’s responsibility.

I asked Lloyds to investigate. It took a couple of weeks, but the welcome news came back that it would reimburse your friend almost all her losses: a total of £179,000.

A Lloyds spokesman says: ‘We carefully review the individual details of each case reported to us in line with the industry scam code and do all we can to get back the money that a victim has lost to fraudsters. 

‘While we did intervene more than once to block payments and warn that she was being scammed, we also appreciate this was a sophisticated fraud and have agreed to refund the vast majority of the money that she lost.’

All in all, your friend was lucky. Transfers made by bank customers to an account held in another bank in their own name — known as ‘me2me’ payments — are not covered by the Contingent Reimbursement Model Code, the industry arrangement designed to protect victims of authorised push payment fraud.

Revolut is not part of this scheme but says it applies the same standards to its customers — though it seemingly felt your friend’s case did not meet its criteria.

Anyone tempted by an investment ad should make checks first. Always consult the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) register of legitimate firms at fca.org.uk to ensure the operation is regulated in the UK. If your bank issues warnings, then heed them.

Meanwhile, social media companies must do more to banish these wicked ads at source. David Postings, head of UK Finance, recently urged them to step up after the banking body published its annual fraud report revealing that three-quarters of authorised push payment scams begin on social media platforms.

In it, he says: ‘Relying on the banking sector alone to reimburse victims of fraud means the platforms that facilitate the majority of the fraud have no financial incentive to stop it.’

Some relief should soon be at hand from the Online Safety Bill progressing through Parliament, as it will demand social media platforms remove scam ads.

A spokesman for Facebook, says: ‘We don’t want anyone to fall victim to these criminals which is why our platforms have systems to block scams and financial services advertisers now have to be FCA-authorised to target UK users. We also work with the police to support their investigations and encourage people to report this content when they see it so we can take action.’

A final word of warning. It can be hard to escape once caught in a scammer’s web. After your friends’s funds were returned, the crooks rang her again, aggressively demanding $54,000. This time she knew what to do — and slammed down the phone.

• Write to Sally Hamilton at Sally Sorts It, Money Mail, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT or email [email protected] — include phone number, address and a note addressed to the offending organisation giving them permission to talk to Sally Hamilton. Please do not send original documents as we cannot take responsibility for them. No legal responsibility can be accepted by the Daily Mail for answers given. 

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk