DRN-6059462

The complaint Ms P complains, initially via a representative, that TSB Bank plc (“TSB”) have failed to refund the money she lost as part of a fake job scam. What happened The details of this complaint are well known to both parties, so I will not repeat everything again here. Instead, I will focus on giving the reasons for my decision. In summary though, Ms P was contacted via a messaging service by a scammer. They persuaded Ms P that they worked for a company that I will call B, that would pay her for completing a series of tasks online. Periodically, while completing these tasks, she was asked to “top up” her account by paying B. When Ms P attempted to withdraw the “income” that she could see on B’s ‘platform’, she was told that she had to pay an additional fee to clear a negative balance which would allow withdrawals commensurate with the “income” she had earned. At this point Ms P realised that she had been scammed. Ms P sent over £40,000 in 2024 and 2025 to B, via an account that she held with a different provider and via a third-party payment processor. Ms P asked TSB to refund the payments she made from her TSB account, as she believes TSB should have done more to prevent her from being scammed in the first place. TSB did not agree with this. One of our investigators looked into this matter and she did not think that Ms P had sufficiently demonstrated she’d lost money to the scam. She also did not think that TSB could have prevented the scam with an appropriate and proportionate intervention, given the answers provided by Ms P when it did intervene. She therefore did not uphold this complaint. Ms P did not agree with this and therefore her complaint has been passed to me to issue a decision. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. In deciding what’s fair and reasonable, I am required to take into account relevant law and regulations, regulators’ rules, guidance and standards, and codes of practice; and, where appropriate, I must also take into account what I consider to have been good industry practice at the time.

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Where the evidence is incomplete, inconclusive or contradictory (as some of it is here), I reach my decision on the balance of probabilities – in other words, on what I consider is more likely to have (or would have) happened, in light of the available evidence and the wider circumstances. In this decision, I’ll concentrate my comments on what I think is relevant. If I don’t comment on a specific point, it’s not because I’ve failed to consider it, but because I don’t think I need to comment in order to reach a fair and reasonable outcome. Our rules allow me to do this and this reflects the nature of our service as a free and informal alternative to the courts. In broad terms, the starting position is that TSB is expected to process payments and withdrawals that a customer authorises it to make. This should be in accordance with the Payment Services Regulations and the terms and conditions of the customer’s account. However, taking into account relevant law, regulatory rules and guidance, relevant codes of practice and what I consider to have been good industry practice at the time, I consider it fair and reasonable that TSB should: • have been monitoring accounts and any payments made or received to counter various risks, including preventing fraud and scams; • have had systems in place to look out for unusual transactions or other signs that might indicate that its customers were at risk of fraud (among other things). This is particularly so given the increase in sophisticated fraud and scams in recent years, which firms are generally more familiar with than the average customer; • have acted to avoid causing foreseeable harm to customers, for example by maintaining adequate systems to detect and prevent scams and by ensuring all aspects of its products, including the contractual terms, enabled it to do so; • in some circumstances, irrespective of the payment channel used, have taken additional steps, or made additional checks, or provided additional warnings, before processing a payment – (as in practice TSB sometimes does); and • have been mindful of – among other things – common scam scenarios, how the fraudulent practices are evolving (including for example the common use of multi-stage fraud by scammers, including the use of payments to cryptocurrency accounts as a step to defraud consumers) and the different risks these can present to consumers, when deciding whether to intervene. Firstly, I note that the investigator has said that Ms P has not demonstrated that she lost money to the scam. I do not agree with this, as there is enough to demonstrate that money was sent to the scammer and comments from the various people she was talking to at B that funds were received. This is not true for every single payment. but there is enough for me to be satisfied, albeit on balance, that Ms P lost money to a scam. That said, I am not going to uphold this complaint because I don’t think that TSB could have prevented or uncovered the scam or needs to refund the payments in question. Let me explain why. I think that TSB should have intervened during some of the payments - given that they were unusually large, compared to the payments Ms P usually made - to find out what they related to. However, I don’t think that this would have stopped the scam.

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I say this because I can see that Ms P’s other account provider did intervene a few times during the crypto withdrawals. When asked questions about the scam during these interventions, Ms P provided answers that were not accurate. She never indicated that she was making these payments as part of a job opportunity. This prevented TSB in providing a warning that related to a job scam. So, I think that Ms P’s choice of payment option meant that TSB would never have been able to provide a relevant warning. I am also mindful that Ms P did give inaccurate answers to other questions asked. For example, Ms P said she was sending funds to friends and family to repay debts. She also said that the company she was sending funds to was FCA registered. So taking everything into consideration, I don’t think that TSB could have stopped the scam with a proportional intervention. I have next considered whether TSB should refund Ms P under its Fraud Refund Guarantee (“FRG”). Firstly, I should confirm that the FRG finished on 6 October 2024, so I am only addressing the payments made before this date. TSB’s website explains that its fraud guarantee, is a first in UK banking and it goes further to cover TSB customers against fraud than anything that has come before it. TSB’s website explained that if a customer is clearly an innocent victim of fraud on their account, the money lost will be refunded – even if the customer makes an honest mistake. And I’ve seen on the TSB’s website there was a reference to the range of situations covered by the fraud guarantee, that are not necessarily covered compared to fraud protections offered by other banks. It does set out that there are exceptions to the guarantee. The exceptions explain that the guarantee doesn’t apply where Ms P is involved in committing the fraud or if she has abused the guarantee by deliberately ignoring account safety information and/or making repeated claims. It also doesn’t apply where Ms P has a dispute with a genuine merchant about goods or services. After considering these exclusions, I’m satisfied Ms P is not entitled to a refund under the guarantee. I say this because Ms P reported to Action Fraud that she had been scammed in July 2024. Yet despite this, she carried on sending funds to the scammer. Additionally, a different account provider of Ms P closed her account as she was told that it thought she was likely being scammed. Taken together, I think that this is enough in this specific case to count as ignoring account safety information, as clearly even Ms P was aware she was being scammed and had also been warned by another provider that she was being scammed, yet chose to keep sending funds from her TSB account. In the circumstances, I can’t fairly say that TSB should reimburse Ms P for her loss in such circumstances. I’ve also thought about whether TSB could have done more to recover the funds after Ms P reported the fraud. TSB are under no obligation to refund the money to Ms P under any of the other reimbursement schemes as transactions to accounts in her own name are not covered. I also do not think that TSB could have recovered the funds from accounts that they were sent to, because they had already been sent on to B. I appreciate this will likely come as a disappointment to Ms P, and I’m sorry to hear she has been the victim of a scam. However, I’m not persuaded that TSB can fairly or reasonably be held liable for her apparent loss in these circumstances.

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My final decision For the reasons given above, I do not uphold this complaint. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Ms P to accept or reject my decision before 22 May 2026. Charlie Newton Ombudsman

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