If you are or were a TSB client then you will remember the meltdown of their computer systems back in 2018.

TSB tried to move their computer systems from their own to those of Sabadell which bought TSB in 2015.

Whether it was lack of testing or bad management or unrealistic expectations or just plain incompetence, the result was millions of their customers couldn’t access their money, direct debits failed leading to penalty costs on their customers and more.

It was the lead story on the news for days as many people had their lives turned upside down by the sudden shutdown of their accounts.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) concluded that TSB failed to organise and control the programme of work and failed to manage the operational risks of the software migration.

The FCA fined TSB £29.8 million and PRA sanctioned TSB for £18.9 million, adding to the £32.7 million it cost TSB to set right damage to their customers accounts.

We rely so much nowadays on computer systems and their information and its up to all organisations to protect their customers data and access.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

The website ispoof.cc sold a subscription service to criminals.

The service allowed the scammers to make their phone calls appear as if from a number set by the scammer.

For example, you get a call from British Gas asking for a late payment and when you check – the caller’s number appears to be one of the British Gas authorised numbers.

But it’s been faked.

This is called spoofing.

Fifty nine thousand criminals signed up for the service (costing up to £5,000) and it is estimated they have conned around 200,000 people with help from the website.

Scotland Yard, the FBI and European law enforcement agencies teamed up to investigate.

The suspected mastermind behind the website is Teejay Fletcher and he is in custody, awaiting trial.

The victims were largely in the UK and America but some across Europe and Australia.

The website has been shutdown and the service stopped and in time those responsible will be sentenced for their crimes.

However, more and more of these operations need cooperation from law enforcement across multiple countries as the Internet respects no boundaries and certainly the criminals don’t.

Australians lost a record amount of more than $2 billion to scams in 2021, despite government, law enforcement, and the private sector disrupting more scam activity than ever before.

This is based on a report including more than 560,000 events and takes data from Scamwatch, ReportCyber, major banks and money remitters, and other government agencies in Australia.

The highest losses were from:

• Investment scams ($701 million)
• payment redirection scams ($227 million)
• romance scams ($142 million).

People aged 65 and over reported the highest losses, and reported losses steadily increased with age.

The ACCC is particularly wanting banks to match payee information in pay anyone transactions. This has been shown to have a real impact in countries that have done so, including the UK.

In 2021, the telecommunications sector’s new Reducing Scam Calls Industry Code resulted in more than 357 million scam calls being blocked.

People in Australia who detect a scam, whether or not they have lost money to it, can report scams and learn more about how to get help on the Scamwatch website at scamwatch.gov.au

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

David Ames has been jailed for 12 years.

His speciality scam was with the front company Harlequin Group which used celebrity endorsements and aggressive sales tactics to con 8,000 investors out of £226 million.

He secured the backing of tennis star Pat Cash, golfer Gary Player and others and of course they had no idea it was all a scam.

His company had 186 accommodation units to sell, such as beach cabanas, villas and hotel rooms.

But he sold each an average of 40 times over – a total of 8,200 sales.  Those extra sales of non existent properties and hotel rooms were his profits.  It could be called a Ponzi scheme.

The customers of course got nothing and it was only a matter of time before he was caught and convicted.

He was sentenced to 12 years in jail.

That is little comfort to the many people who lost tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pounds. In many cases that was their life savings, put down expecting a retirement home but instead being conned out of everything.

Some ‘lucky’ losers may get as much as 2% of their capital back.

Be very careful who you invest with and place your trust in celebrity endorsements- they are paid advertisers.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.