LYING awake night after night, Kristina Belkaite can’t stop thinking about whether she’ll be able to keep her business afloat after scammers stole over £24,700.
The 28-year-old runs a street food stall with business partner Fabien Battut and their hard-earned cash was swiped by fraudsters in June.
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They received a phone call from someone claiming to be from their business bank, Tide.
The scammer said that hackers had compromised their account and a new one needed to be opened to keep their cash safe.
But little did they know the caller on the other end of the phone was a fraudster, out to steal their cash.
At first the pair were suspicious about the phone call out of the blue.
But the caller had personal information such as transaction details and sounded professional, which persuaded Kristina and Fabien it was real.
To move their cash to a new “safe” account, the duo were sent an email with a QR code in it.
Once scanned, this would enable the caller to access their account.
Usually when logging into a Tide account on your computer, a QR code pops up on the login page – you scan this through your app and it then lets you access your account on your laptop.
The scammer set up a bank transfer to move £24,700 to the so-called “safe” account.
They then said that a new card and account information would arrive in the post within a couple of days.
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But after the phone call ended, the penny dropped – Kristina and Fabien realised they had just been scammed.
“She kept talking over me on the phone, and when she hung up I thought something was fishy,” Kristina said.
“I went ‘oh my god its a scam’, and I was freaking out.”
The pair immediately logged on to their Tide app to report the fraud.
They have a basic business account package and with no monthly charge to use it.
But that means they couldn’t phone customer services and had to go through the app’s messaging service instead.
Tide aims to reply to messages in the app within 20 minutes.
But Kristina and Fabien didn’t receive a reply until the next day, despite the urgency of the issue.
Since then, Kristina said they have been going “round in circles” with Tide – they have asked the bank numerous times for a phone call.
“Each time, we had to explain problem again fresh, ” said Kristina.
“No one bothered to call me for days – I’m furious.”
Eventually Tide told Kristina that following an investigation into their case, they could only get 24p of their money back.
“It’s ridiculous – how can we run the business on that?,” said Kristina.
“We’re not closing our company, but I’m really worried.
“We’re having to rely on credit cards just to keep the business going because all the cash was taken.
“We’ve already racked up a bill of £3,000 and we can’t pay suppliers on time.
“I can’t sleep and I can’t concentrate on anything – all I’m thinking all day long is: ‘where the hell is my money?'”.
That’s why Kristina got in touch with The Sun’s Squeeze Team to see if we could help get their cash back.
After we contacted Tide, it looked at their case again, and is now offering a full refund plus £500 in compensation.
A spokesperson said: “After a complaint was raised, we investigated the matter thoroughly, and we are sorry for the added stress the customer has been through getting this matter resolved.
“We would encourage all our customers to be vigilant. There is advice on our website about fraud prevention.”
What to do if you think you’ve been a victim of fraud
Unfortunately, the number of scam victims like Kristina and Fabien are rising.
Cases of fraud jumped 36% to 5.1million in the year to September 2021, according to the Office for National Statistics.
If you think you’ve been scammed, call your bank immediately using the number on the back of the card.
Tell Action Fraud, report it online or by calling 0300 123 2040 (Monday to Friday, 8am-8pm).
It will tell the police and give you a crime reference number.
Some banks offer automatic refunds – but it does vary.
Current rules say if you have not authorised the payment then you should get a refund as long as you did not act fraudulently or with “gross negligence”, for example, giving away your PIN number or password.
