Lloyds Bank PLC · DRN-6295963

The complaint Miss C has complained that Lloyds Bank PLC won’t refund the money she lost after falling victim to a scam. What happened Both sides are most familiar with the case and we must anonymise decisions, so I’ll summarise what happened relatively briefly. In 2025, Miss C was contacted by scammers, who offered her a flexible remote job completing simple tasks for a high rate of pay. But she had to pay her own money in to clear negative balances. Miss C initially paid the scammers using her account at a different bank. But after her payments there were getting declined, she switched to using Lloyds. She made three payments from her Lloyds account to her own cryptocurrency account, totalling over £6,000. She then bought crypto and sent it on to the scammers. Lloyds intervened several times and spoke to Miss C about her spending. She assured them she was just going to keep the crypto in her crypto account as an investment, and she was doing this of her own accord after researching the matter thoroughly and speaking to friends and colleagues. Miss C objected to these repeated interventions; and following them, she tried using other accounts to pay the scammers instead. In the end, the scammers asked for more money than Miss C could pay, she spoke to her partner, and her partner urged her to stop. Miss C reported the scam to Lloyds. Lloyds didn’t think they were liable for Miss C’s loss. Our investigator looked into things independently and didn’t uphold the complaint. Miss C asked for an ombudsman’s review, so the complaint’s been passed to me to decide. 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.

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First, I understand that Miss C fell victim to a cruel scam, and that she’s been going through a truly tough time more generally, for which she has my sympathy. I appreciate this cannot have been an easy matter for her to face, and I appreciate why she would like her money back. We must keep in mind that it’s the scammers who are primarily responsible for their own scam, and it’s the scammers who really owe Miss C her money back. But in this case between Miss C and Lloyds, I’m just considering what Miss C and Lloyds might be liable for. Having carefully considered everything that both sides have said and provided, I can’t fairly hold Lloyds liable for Miss C’s loss. I’ll explain why. It’s not in dispute that Miss C authorised the payments involved. So although she didn’t intend for the money to end up with scammers, under the Payment Services Regulations she is liable for her own payments and the resulting loss in the first instance. And broadly speaking, Lloyds had an obligation to follow her instructions – the starting position in law is that banks are expected to process payments which a customer authorises them to make. Lloyds should have been on the lookout for payments which could be the result of fraud or scams, to help prevent them, though a balance must be struck between identifying and responding to potentially fraudulent payments, and ensuring there’s minimal disruption to legitimate payments. Given factors like these payments’ size, speed, and destination, I think Lloyds should have intervened here. So I’m glad to see that they did so. They assessed the pattern of spending, delayed payments, and spoke to Miss C at length to try to identify what was happening and provide tailored intervention. Having listened to the calls involved, I’m afraid I find that the main reason why Lloyds’ intervention didn’t work was down to Miss C’s actions. Lloyds asked her a variety of questions, including open and probing queries. But Miss C stuck steadfastly to a simple and believable cover story about just investing of her own accord after researching the matter. She took advice from the scammers on how best to mislead the firms involved, discussed how to split payments to avoid scam checks, followed the scammers’ instructions closely, asked the scammers to stay in touch while she spoke to the bank, and kept the scammers updated. This all hindered Lloyds from being able to reasonably uncover or prevent what was going on, even when carrying out proportionate intervention. Lloyds did provide scam warnings tailored to Miss C’s answers. But because those answers were false or misleading, it meant that most of the warnings weren’t very relevant. With that said, Lloyds did also warm Miss C about job scams like this one, providing details which were very relevant to her situation. But while Miss C acknowledged the warning, she maintained that she was just investing in crypto of her own accord, and carried on. While Lloyds did need to be wary of the potential for cover stories, they couldn’t necessarily know for certain every time someone is lying or not. Here, Lloyds did probe Miss C, and they talked about how scammers might ask one to lie and the importance of honest answers. But Miss C stuck to the false story. Given how closely she stuck to it, and how simple and plausible it was, it doesn’t look like reasonable intervention could’ve likely uncovered the scam in this case. I don’t think Lloyds had sufficient reason to think she was so at risk of foreseeable harm that they needed to go to lengths like blocking her account entirely. And even then, I see that when Miss C’s banks or crypto exchanges questioned or declined her payments or even suspended her account outright, she would then just switch to using a different account or try opening new ones to make the scam payments.

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Again, I do appreciate that Miss C really trusted the scammers, and that she was going through a very difficult time, and she does have my sympathy there. But I can’t hold Lloyds liable on that basis. I find that Lloyds intervened when they should have, and I don’t think they failed in any particular duty to keep Miss C’s account safe. The issue here is that given how Miss C reacted, it doesn’t look like reasonable, proportionate intervention was likely to have stopped the loss. It looks more likely that Miss C would’ve still gone ahead with the payments she did one way or another. And so I cannot fairly hold Lloyds liable there. I’ve then considered what Lloyds did to try to recover the money after Miss C told them about the scam. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible for Lloyds to recover funds which Miss C had already sent on in crypto. And any funds remaining in Miss C’s own crypto account were still in her name, so there’d be nothing more for Lloyds to do there either. As these were payments to Miss C’s own crypto account, they were not covered by the CRM Code or the PSR’s latest rules. And I’m afraid there was nothing more that Lloyds could’ve reasonably done to get the money back here. Finally, I do understand that Miss C has found the matter most distressing. As I mentioned before, it’s the scammers who scammed her, rather than Lloyds, so it’s the scammers who are really responsible for the scam and the resulting distress. While Lloyds did have a delay in responding to Miss C’s complaint, I should point out that “handling complaints” is not an activity we normally cover in and of itself – i.e. we’re not really here to look at complaints about complaining. And complaining will naturally involve some investment of time and effort. Here, Lloyds apologised, kept Miss C updated, and issued a complaint response which set out their reasoning and which I’ve found came to an appropriate outcome. I don’t think the delay caused sufficient material impact to warrant compensation. So while I’m very sorry to hear about what the scammers did to Miss C, I don’t think Lloyds can fairly be held responsible for her loss. And so I can’t fairly tell Lloyds to reimburse Miss C in this case. My final decision For the reasons I’ve explained, I don’t uphold this complaint. This final decision marks the end of our service’s consideration of the case. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Miss C to accept or reject my decision before 26 May 2026. Adam Charles Ombudsman

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