Young woman’s bank account emptied because of an unfortunate coincidence

Sometimes coincidences can cost a lot of money. Last week, a young Turkish woman – who we shall call Bahar, although that is not her real name – contacted us after losing almost all her savings to a criminal enterprise, largely as a result of a very unfortunate coincidence.

Bahar came to Ireland to study English just more than 10 months ago and as well as her studies, the science graduate found herself a job working as a car park attendant in Dublin. Given that she is planning to spend some time in Ireland, one of the first things she did was to get her finances sorted and to set up a bank account.

With the pillar banks not making life easier for her, and many others in her position, when it came to opening a bank account, she opted for one of the digital banks – a local company called Money Jar.

Founded in 2019, the fintech offers a digital current account with an Irish IBAN. Effectively, people who sign up get access to a virtual bank account quickly and easily, as well as a prepaid debit card which they can use in much the same way as one of the debit cards issued by a more traditional bank.

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One of the unique selling points of Money Jar, apart from the fact that it is Irish, is that it promotes mindful spending and saving. The app allows users to allocate different amounts of money to different “money jars” to save for particular goals – be it a holiday, a mortgage or something less significant.

So, Bahar worked and studied and she saved and over the course of the time she was here, she had managed to set aside just more than €2,000. She hoped the money would help her cover, at least in part, the cost of a master’s degree programme in Ireland in the months ahead. The mindful money people at Money Jar seemed ideal for managing her savings.

Things, however, were about to go off the rails.

Not long before Christmas, she did what many people do and she sent cards to her friends and family at home. One card sent to a friend in Turkey never arrived at its destination.

Bahar thought it was strange but figured it was probably caught up in the festive mail madness and didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. “I was thinking it was just a delay going to Turkey and it was Christmas time so, with the holiday and everything, I thought it was okay that she got it so late.”

Then, a text message arrived, purportedly from An Post. The message said: “Your parcel address is not delivering properly. Please update and repay the courier fee of €1.95″. The message also contained a link.

[ Eight scams Irish consumers should be wary of ]

Given that she had recently had an interaction with the Irish postal service – her first, as it happens – and given that the interaction was still incomplete as the card that she had sent had never arrived, Bahar, understandably perhaps, put two and two together and assumed that there must have been a problem with the address she had written on the card she had sent her friend in Turkey.

The fact that English is not her first language and that she is unfamiliar with the workings of An Post – who would never ask a customer for their bank details in a text – did not work in her favour and she followed the link.

“My friend didn’t get the post card because there was [a] delay and it didn’t go to her house so I thought it might be because of a wrong address like the message said,” she says. “So, I clicked the link and filled in all the info about her address. I just filled in all the blanks and I shared my bank account details and I sent it.”

You may have already guessed what happens next.

Bahar went about her day but not before checking her online bank account to see if the €1.95 had been taken by An Post, which would mean her friend would soon get her post card.

“I thought this amount of money would be taken from my account but there was nothing, so I was thinking maybe something was a bit strange,” she continues. While she thought it was odd, the alarm bells had not started ringing, or, at least, they were not ringing very loudly.

“I was checking and checking again and then, maybe five hours later, all my money was taken in three parts. When I realised that I was shocked and I contacted my bank and said there was something happening on my account and it was completely without my consent.”

Money Jar immediately blocked her account. “But my money was gone. I wrote a complaint form and told them I had been sent this fake scam message and all my money – €2,000 – was taken by a fake company. After maybe 40 days, they replied saying we investigated the situation but unfortunately, we can’t give you your money back. It is all my savings.”

She says she is disappointed that the bank did not flag the initial transaction as suspicious. “In my bank account, I normally don’t have a huge amount of payments with other people so it would have been unusual,” she says. “It was a very unfortunate coincidence but I got these scam texts before from AIB and other banks, but because I have not got a relationship with them, I knew they were scams.”

Now, to be fair to Money Jar, we have come across stories of this nature on far too many occasions over the last couple of years and all banks and financial operators tend to follow the same rules. If you are hoodwinked by a criminal enterprise into giving away your financial details, then it is entirely on you.

Bahar was aware of this too and the main reason she made contact with us was not to retrieve her own money, but in the hope that by sharing her story she might save someone else from falling victim to a similar scam.

Even though our reader was not confident anything could be done to retrieve her money – and in truth, neither was Pricewatch – we got in touch with the company to see what options were on the table for her and if a chargeback was possible.

A chargeback is an interbank system that allows a credit or debit card customer who has paid for a service or product that they have not received to contact their bank, who will then contact the third party’s bank, have the transaction cancelled and then, ultimately, have the money restored to the initial customer. It seemed like a long shot but a long shot is better than no shot.

MONEY JAR RESPONSE

We contacted the company but didn’t get very far at all. “Thank you for your mail, we cannot comment on individual cases,” an unidentified spokesperson said. “What I can say, is that we take all fraud cases seriously and work hard to prevent our customers falling victim of this type of crime. We have fraud awareness campaigns and automated fraud monitoring systems in place. We work with the Garda Síochána and other financial institutions to retrieve any money that has been stolen by criminal gangs.”