More Great Work From The Home Office....

[ToraToraTora]

https://news.sky.com/story/home-office-demonising-illegal-immigrants-by-shutting-down-bank-accounts-in-new-crackdown-12851336
...when the hand wringers start accusing you of "demonising" you know you're doing something right!

[youngmafbog]

Yes Suella is actually getting to grips with this. As you say, when the liberal elites start whining you are doing the right thing.

[jourdain2]

Amnesty used to stick to letter-writing. Seems a decent enough start to me - mind you, the police will have to be on the ball because money movement will go underground - at least make life difficult for illegals. After all it's only much the same as the Canadian Pres. (Trudeau) did to anyone who refused the Covid vaccine.

[Gromit]

I assumed that people employing illegal immigrants paid them in cash so as not to incriminate themselves with a paper trail.
And the Home Office action will have little or no effect.
Probably an exercise in seeing to be doing something, rather than tackle the problem seriously.

[Hymie]

UK banks are so incompetent that they are not able to stop someone opening a fraudulent account, in order to scam people – so they will have no chance whatsoever of spotting an account of an illegal immigrant.

If I were the UK banking regulator, if money was scammed from someone by using a fraudulent account – then by default, the scammed person would get a full refund from the bank that allowed the fraudulent account to be opened.

Banks would soon get their act together in such a situation – but where they can continue to deny culpability for money lost to scammers using fraudulent accounts, the scams will continue.

[Zacs-Master]

Hymie, what’s a fraudulent account?

[Hymie]

Fraudulent bank accounts are where the person who opened the account is not who they claim to be (and will normally use a false address), the bank is then unable to trace the person who opened the account – with the person using the account for fraud purposes (such as scamming people).

[ToraToraTora]

hymie: "UK banks are so incompetent that they are not able to stop someone opening a fraudulent account, in order to scam people – so they will have no chance whatsoever of spotting an account of an illegal immigrant. " - what a load of hogwash, on what do you base this revelation? I have worked on IT systems for banks for most of my working life, currently at one of the worlds largest and we have very sophisticated processes for all kinds of bank fraud.

[Zacs-Master]

Ok, thanks.

[10ClarionSt]

TTT, I don't know anything about banking systems and your knowledge of banking fraud seems extensive, but lots of people are still being scammed. A long way to go yet?

[Hymie]

So all these reports (on programs like Radio 4’s Money Box and others), where a person has been scammed, with the money passing to a UK account and on to a foreign bank – with the receiving UK bank claiming that there is nothing they can do about it, because they cannot identify the account holder are complete nonsense.

You need to contact programs (like Money Box) and point out that the UK banks are telling them this complete nonsense.

A few years ago there was an undercover TV program that showed the operation of a criminal gang, flying persons into the UK (and out again within days) from Eastern Europe, with the sole purpose of opening fraudulent accounts for them.
So the banking systems aren’t as sophisticated as you might think.

[ToraToraTora]

The accounts are usually legit but used for fraud.

[Hymie]

Since there are no fraudulent accounts within the UK banking system, where the bank cannot identify the true account holder and their correct UK address – they should be perfectly happy with my proposal that if they cannot supply the police these details on an account used to scam someone – then they pay.

[Hymie]

If these accounts are legit but used for fraud – why is plod not knocking on their door?

[New Judge]

//A few years ago there was an undercover TV program that showed the operation of a criminal gang, flying persons into the UK (and out again within days) from Eastern Europe, with the sole purpose of opening fraudulent accounts for them.//

Sounds like that is a very good reason to end the freedom of movement facilitated by EU membership then? Presumably these people flew in and out courtesy of an EU identity card. Perhaps a valid passport and even a visa for those from the less trustworthy countries might be the order of the day.

[ToraToraTora]

12:14, they are, millions are seized every year under the proceeds of crime act. All a bank can do is check legitimacy when an account is opened. If it is later used for fraud that's not down to the bank. Even so we do have many systems looking for patterns that indicate crime, money laundering etc and many accounts are frozen.

[ToraToraTora]

eg £354m was siezed 2021-22
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/asset-recovery-statistical-bulletin-financial-years-ending-2017-to-2022/asset-recovery-statistical-bulletin-financial-years-ending-2017-to-2022

[Hymie]

If I remember correctly, the criminal gang perpetrated the scam by organising the relevant false paperwork in advance (in the name of the arriving Eastern European) to dupe the bank.

Although the persons in the undercover program were from Eastern Europe – they could have been any foreign national.

[Hymie]

The government statistics show that a total of £1.27 million was recovered in 2020, compared to a total fraud amount for that year of £1.26 billion – or 0.1%; plenty of room for improvement.

[New Judge]

//...they could have been any foreign national.//

If they had been "any foreign [non-EU] national" they would have needed a passport and possibly a visa (depending on the country which issued their passport). Unless, of course, they had false EU paperwork.

[Hymie]

Since TTT who claims to work for a bank seems to be totally unaware of how these bank scams work, I’m going to explain it for him.

Someone phones you claiming to be from your bank, with enough information on you to convince you that it is your bank calling you (this usually includes spoofing the bank’s phone number, knowing your account details and other such as date of birth, address etc).
They tell you that there has been some fraudulent activity on your account and that you need to transfer the balance to a safe account that they have set up (this safe account is the fraudulent account that they control). They talk the victim through the transfer process and once the funds have been transferred to their fraudulent account – they transfer the money out of the country.

The bank then refuses to reimburse the victim, pointing out that they voluntarily made the transfer payments (known is push-payment frauds). Billions of pounds have been lost by victims of these push-payment frauds, despite bank employees who work in their IT departments claiming that they have sophisticated processes in place which prevent this.

If banks were forced to reimburse victims where the bank had allowed a fraudulent account to be set up in the UK – then people working in the bank’s IT department would be tasked with preventing this fraud pronto.