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Savings account and current account drained £500k each. Nothing to do with McD's, just happened to be there when he found out. Barclays not being terribly transparent about what's going down - I doubt he has that much overdraft facility on a current account or savings, so it's really on them.
Wouldn't they just freeze/close account? I thought they could drain it only if someone is sentenced.
I get that if it's AML they pretty much can't tell you anything, which I think is unfair and can ruin lives, but I was sure they can't just empty accounts because they want to.
For some reason - some banks just make the Ballance appear crazy negative while they are doing their checks. I'm guessing that has the effect of stopping transactions going out etc - it does seem to be stupid - possibly the best work around they have?
The logic is that it would tip off those who are actually money laundering (i.e. those for whom these measures actually exist). Ideally, all their accounts (which may well be across different providers) get frozen before they realise they're onto them. Politely informing the launderer that their accounts are frozen due to AML would likely prevent that.
That logic doesn’t work though as at the point someone is ringing up the bank, they already know their accounts have been frozen and if they were actually money laundering they know why. There’s no extra tip off.
Problem is, money laundering usually requires more than one party to be effective. If they did engage straight away, I personally think risk to benefit ratio would favour "benefit" however, anyone laundering money that's worth their salt who's told what the problem is will simply slip through the system.
My problem is, with current system, any serious money laundering won't get detected anyway and all they do is they annoy your regular people who did nothing wrong. But that's my view.
It will more likely be them getting hacked and having to do the checks. Because no way he had that kind of overdraft. Which means a lot of things outside his control happened
£50 for lying and theft? You should have got more. I got like £150 once for having to complain that they kept sending credit card offers in post despite multiple calls to stop.
Absolutely justified compo. There's no way this is even identify fraud, because there's no way a bank is gonna let someone go a million quid overdrawn, even if they can absolutely prove who they are.
This has to be some horrible error on the part of Barclays.
This sounded like someone using the chance to brag that he had a million pounds in his account (which would be stupid), but actually it's just "Barclays is hopeless"
My dd for the mortgage was returned yesterday and the person on Barclays chat first lied that there wasn't enough money - then when I pushed blamed the mortgage company - When I rang them they claimed the money had been taken, so we'll see what happens.
With modern banking, it's sensible to have more than one account though, since every online system is only one poorly planned update away from failing for a period of time.
Barclays have paid other people’s mortgages out of my family’s bank accounts on no less than two separate occasions (separated by decades) one was my sister, when she was 16.
Also their apology to the 16-year old? A gift box with bottles of wine.
That in its self should have been referred to the ombudsman.
The Barclays credit card system is awful as well, the app crashes, breaks and fails regularly. My old credit card was leaked online and their fraud team claimed it was okay to keep using the card that had been leaked, a week later they suddenly had a change of heart and swapped my credit card number but the fraud team gave out mixed messaging.
When I was on my honeymoon Barclays decided to block my card, I phoned up support and again they did nothing, spoke to the social media team and they ended up sending us custom baggage tags and some massage stones.
Now the social media team want people to click on a link to get them to respond back but the link never works and they then don’t have to do anything. Terrible company, badly managed.
Happened to a co-worker YEARS ago: they took his mortgage payment twice, then when he complained they returned both payments, then threatened him for not making his mortgage payment.
Apart from it showing as overdraft if you read the article. He never said he had it, and all he will get for trouble is that he no longer owes a million.
It sounds like his account has been blocked whilst they investigate some activity and for legal reason Barclays can’t tell him why. Barclays setting his accounts to -500k is a way of blocking his accounts without closing them.
He doesn’t actually owe them a million quid and if his accounts do end up closed then they’d send him whatever money was in there back
I was moving around money to put it into a savings account with the best interest rate, but sent it to the wrong account (owned by me), so I logged into that account and transferred that same amount minutes later to a different account.
Must've flagged their Anti Laundering checks because this action froze my account. In spite of the fact that the account the money came from was in my name, and the money I sent to was in my name.
Had to send them evidence of where the money came from. It was only £2000 so hardly a massive amount of money
Missed a direct debit with my account frozen for a few days 🙄.
It’s a fairly standard mechanism it seems. It’s come up quite a few times over on r/legaladviceuk. I guess it’s easier and quicker for a bank to set an account to minus a lot than to block it.
It really isn't. I work for a bank and to move 500k out of an account (because thats what they'd have to do, even if it just went to a suspense account) would require 3 people to authorise that on our system. I dont know why it would be a thing for some banks to do that, but I've certainly never come across it.
They could but then your account would obviously be closed and if their investigation turned out everything is fine they’d have to reopen your account and reissue everything so it would be a bigger pain in the ass. This way the account is open but unusable and blocked
No, they can just place a stop on the account that for all intents and purposes gives the impression that its closed. Then remove it and poof, its back.
Reading the artical, he didn't have 1m that was stollen, he had two accounts that went 500k each into overdraft leaving him 1m in debt. Justified compoface. No idea how the bank didn't flag it!
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Took a bit of digging but it's this story:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/22174707/someone-stole-a-million-from-bank-account/
Savings account and current account drained £500k each. Nothing to do with McD's, just happened to be there when he found out. Barclays not being terribly transparent about what's going down - I doubt he has that much overdraft facility on a current account or savings, so it's really on them.
Justified compoface for sure.
It will be some kind of AML / suspicious activity check.
Wouldn't they just freeze/close account? I thought they could drain it only if someone is sentenced.
I get that if it's AML they pretty much can't tell you anything, which I think is unfair and can ruin lives, but I was sure they can't just empty accounts because they want to.
For some reason - some banks just make the Ballance appear crazy negative while they are doing their checks. I'm guessing that has the effect of stopping transactions going out etc - it does seem to be stupid - possibly the best work around they have?
I’ve always thought it was absolutely stupid that they aren’t allowed to engage with you on this. Could clear up any misunderstanding pretty quickly.
The logic is that it would tip off those who are actually money laundering (i.e. those for whom these measures actually exist). Ideally, all their accounts (which may well be across different providers) get frozen before they realise they're onto them. Politely informing the launderer that their accounts are frozen due to AML would likely prevent that.
Used to work in finance and they don’t fuck around with tipping off. If you do it even by accident it’s prison time.
That logic doesn’t work though as at the point someone is ringing up the bank, they already know their accounts have been frozen and if they were actually money laundering they know why. There’s no extra tip off.
Problem is, money laundering usually requires more than one party to be effective. If they did engage straight away, I personally think risk to benefit ratio would favour "benefit" however, anyone laundering money that's worth their salt who's told what the problem is will simply slip through the system.
My problem is, with current system, any serious money laundering won't get detected anyway and all they do is they annoy your regular people who did nothing wrong. But that's my view.
Agreed. Anyone actually money laundering will know exactly why the account has been frozen anyway.
Hell, I would argue, anyone familiar with money laundering will make sure their account doesn't get frozen, even if it takes long time.
But that's just my guess, there's obviously no way I'd know enough about this stuff.
It will more likely be them getting hacked and having to do the checks. Because no way he had that kind of overdraft. Which means a lot of things outside his control happened
Barclays are scumbags. Told me they weren't charging me when I could see it on the accounts. Refered it to ombudsman and got my cash back + £50
£50 for lying and theft? You should have got more. I got like £150 once for having to complain that they kept sending credit card offers in post despite multiple calls to stop.
£450 in total. Also made Barclays finally acknowledge the Stepchange agreement.
Digging? The article link is under the automod comment?
Didn't show/load on my device and still doesn't.
Absolutely justified compo. There's no way this is even identify fraud, because there's no way a bank is gonna let someone go a million quid overdrawn, even if they can absolutely prove who they are.
This has to be some horrible error on the part of Barclays.
…am I meant to know what this is or is the mobile reddit app not showing the story?
The link is hidden under the auto mod comment. Story is from the Sun though and fuck those guys
Freddy Starr ate my scratch card.
It was (and usually is) under the top pinned comment
This sounded like someone using the chance to brag that he had a million pounds in his account (which would be stupid), but actually it's just "Barclays is hopeless"
My dd for the mortgage was returned yesterday and the person on Barclays chat first lied that there wasn't enough money - then when I pushed blamed the mortgage company - When I rang them they claimed the money had been taken, so we'll see what happens.
With modern banking, it's sensible to have more than one account though, since every online system is only one poorly planned update away from failing for a period of time.
Barclays have paid other people’s mortgages out of my family’s bank accounts on no less than two separate occasions (separated by decades) one was my sister, when she was 16.
Also their apology to the 16-year old? A gift box with bottles of wine.
That in its self should have been referred to the ombudsman.
The Barclays credit card system is awful as well, the app crashes, breaks and fails regularly. My old credit card was leaked online and their fraud team claimed it was okay to keep using the card that had been leaked, a week later they suddenly had a change of heart and swapped my credit card number but the fraud team gave out mixed messaging.
When I was on my honeymoon Barclays decided to block my card, I phoned up support and again they did nothing, spoke to the social media team and they ended up sending us custom baggage tags and some massage stones.
Now the social media team want people to click on a link to get them to respond back but the link never works and they then don’t have to do anything. Terrible company, badly managed.
Happened to a co-worker YEARS ago: they took his mortgage payment twice, then when he complained they returned both payments, then threatened him for not making his mortgage payment.
Apart from it showing as overdraft if you read the article. He never said he had it, and all he will get for trouble is that he no longer owes a million.
Not sensible push all of them if it doesnt materialise they will stick fees on you
How is that even possible? How can you go that much overdrawn when you historically never have anywhere near that amount of
It sounds like his account has been blocked whilst they investigate some activity and for legal reason Barclays can’t tell him why. Barclays setting his accounts to -500k is a way of blocking his accounts without closing them.
He doesn’t actually owe them a million quid and if his accounts do end up closed then they’d send him whatever money was in there back
They can just...block his account without closing it though. They don't need to send an account 500k overdrawn to do that.
TSB did that with me.
I was moving around money to put it into a savings account with the best interest rate, but sent it to the wrong account (owned by me), so I logged into that account and transferred that same amount minutes later to a different account.
Must've flagged their Anti Laundering checks because this action froze my account. In spite of the fact that the account the money came from was in my name, and the money I sent to was in my name.
Had to send them evidence of where the money came from. It was only £2000 so hardly a massive amount of money
Missed a direct debit with my account frozen for a few days 🙄.
Frozen? Did you "let it go, let it go?" (sorry, couldn't resist!)
Or did you complain to the ombudsman?
Of all the responsibilities of becoming a dad, telling jokes like this is the one that scares me the most.
It’s a fairly standard mechanism it seems. It’s come up quite a few times over on r/legaladviceuk. I guess it’s easier and quicker for a bank to set an account to minus a lot than to block it.
It really isn't. I work for a bank and to move 500k out of an account (because thats what they'd have to do, even if it just went to a suspense account) would require 3 people to authorise that on our system. I dont know why it would be a thing for some banks to do that, but I've certainly never come across it.
You might not have come across it but clearly other people have.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/comments/16ewsbx/barclays_closed_my_accounts_without_warning/
https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/113xdf4/bank_accounts_overdrawn_missing_and_suspended/
https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/comments/vv3rns/barclays_closed_my_account_after_a_binance/
https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/comments/18y9vwl/comment/kgcr6ms/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1
Its clearly something that barclays and hsbc do, because natwest certainly dont. Its a bit odd to do it that way.
They could but then your account would obviously be closed and if their investigation turned out everything is fine they’d have to reopen your account and reissue everything so it would be a bigger pain in the ass. This way the account is open but unusable and blocked
No, they can just place a stop on the account that for all intents and purposes gives the impression that its closed. Then remove it and poof, its back.
How the hell did the bank let him go a million quid overdrawn?
Exactly same question I want answered
How was it not just declined ?
Why are his head hair, moustache and beard different colours
Reading the artical, he didn't have 1m that was stollen, he had two accounts that went 500k each into overdraft leaving him 1m in debt. Justified compoface. No idea how the bank didn't flag it!
Your hair looks small
Limmy?
He's certainly let himself go
Bank next to the Lloyds-Far-Massey.
I wonder what the overdraft interest charges would be for being -£500,000.
My instinct is they suspect something’s going on with money movement in the account. It doesn’t mean there was, just that they suspect something.
I am having a shit time as it is currently to see that this person is a millionaire has really done me in
Merry Christmas
He never was
I mean… He’s not anymore if that makes you feel any better 🤷♂️.
Merry Christmas mate!
He never was