Steve Wright, CEO of Kent Brushes is “appalled” at the service from their bank and the police after they had £1.6million stolen by thieves.
He spoke to host Paul Lewis on the BBC podcast Money Box about the scam and how it unfolded.
The hairbrush company, which supplies brushes to the Royal Family, had millions stolen from their account in just 20 minutes.
After three months, the founders have not been able to claim any of their money back.
Criminals called up the company’s financial controller (FC) and convinced him the company’s money was at risk and that it needed to be transferred.
There were no “alarm bells” as the criminals had copied the company’s official website and number so everything looked as if it was legitimate.
The FC was prompted to log into his account to move the funds somewhere else. Once he went onto the website and logged into what he thought was his account, the screen went blank. He thought his computer was completing updates, however, this is how scammers were able to gain access to the Kenr Brushes financial account.
The thieves managed to steal £1.6million through nearly 40 separate transactions, all to new payees in less than 20 minutes.
Authorised push payment fraud is a form of fraud in which victims are manipulated into making real-time payments to fraudsters. Britons are tricked into sending money to a fraudster posing as a genuine payee.
Mr Wright said: “The moment I was informed that we had fallen victim to the APP scam I don’t think I can put into words how I felt.
“My stomach dropped. My initial thought was ‘this is a mistake’ and surely the bank would be on hand to help us recover the money as it happened literally moments ago.
“I felt for my financial controller who had fallen victim because you have to realise it’s not just a business that has fallen victim, people are involved here as well.
“Then I went into that ‘okay well now we have to try and get an actual recovery? What do we do and what plan do we need to put in place. How we go about recovering these funds?'”
He immediately contacted his bank, Barclays, for support on the issue. Mr Wright was shocked the bank’s systems didn’t flag the magnitude of transfers in such a short space of time and block them.
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He was told the complaint had been logged, and they would try and recover some of the funds.
The police and Action Fraud were informed also, however, the Action Fraud investigation would take 28 days to complete and the police didn’t do one.
Mr Wright continued: “It’s been handled appallingly. We’re talking about £1.6 million. We are a business institution, one of the oldest businesses in the country and one of the oldest in the world.
“But the response from the bank is that they don’t care and there wasn’t a response from Action Fraud.
“It’s not been taken seriously and if that’s how we are treated losing £1.6 million, many other victims, many in vulnerable positions, I can’t even imagine how they must feel as well.”
Barclays explained it is evident their customer has been a victim of a sophisticated scam and no bank will ever ask people to transfer money or share sensitive data like one-time passcodes or pins, adding it believes working with law enforcement is essential to stopping scams and catching fraudsters.
Also that a great deal of fraud awareness and education information has been provided to Kent Brushes to help them protect themselves from scams, including the scam in particular.
It finally added this case has been thoroughly investigated at the highest levels and its decision remains unchanged that the business customer will be held liable, so no refunds.
For its part Action Fraud had admitted to recording the details of the crime incorrectly and has since apologised and put in place measures to ensure that doesn’t happen again.
It should be noted that even with correct details, it is very rare that victims can recover their money.
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