- A Revolut customer called Jack was recently scammed and had a total of £165,000 stolen from his accounts through 137 small transactions in 23 minutes.
- Jack felt that if Revolut had better security and been more vigilant, this wouldn’t have happened.
- Revolut declined to comment and has not yet refunded the customer.
Revolut customer was recently defrauded of £165,000 and blames it on the company’s inadequate security measures. A customer named Jack (who does not wish to reveal his surname) runs an international business that requires him to have multiple currencies in his Revolut account.
In February this year he received, among others: a call from a scammer impersonating a Revolut employee. He was informed that his account may have been compromised because it was being used on a shared Wi-Fi network.
Concerned that he had actually been compromised, Jack shared some details that allowed the fraudsters to view his account, including all of his transactions. These payments included a £21.98 purchase on Etsy that he made that morning.
The scammers sent him a message with a request confirm the amount with the 6-digit code. Since the message appeared to be from Revolut, Jack believed it and shared the code with the caller.
What Jack didn’t know was that the code wasn’t for confirmation. The fraudsters set up their own accountsit called “Etsy” and the code Jack shared actually authenticated the new transaction.
He then received two other Revolut text messages asking for a small fee under the names Revolut Fee and Revolut Fees Care, not knowing that they were fake. Jack also approved these transactions, accidentally setting up three new recipients at the end of the process.
This is where the real nightmare began. Soon thousands of pounds began to flow out of his account in smaller payments. Many transactions were made in a matter of moments.
As soon as Jack realized he had been tricked, he reacted immediately I tried contacting Revolut’s customer service team. However, he realized that there was no call option in the app, only a chat option.
Nevertheless, he sent the following message:I was deceived. Please freeze my account“. It took 23 minutes for the appropriate department to review this message and freeze his account which was enough for hackers to siphon £165,000 from his account.
Read more: Revolut criticizes Meta’s new collaborative approach to dealing with fraud
Jacek’s complaint against Revolut
Jack believes that this whole incident is Revolut’s fault.
- For starters, when you try to access your Revolut account from another device, you’re prompted for input selfie to authorize setup. Jack didn’t share any selfies with the caller, yet he still managed to gain access to his account. Why?
- When he asked the Revolut team to show the photo used to complete the setup, they replied that these selfies were not stored on their servers. Therefore, it is unknown how they managed to bypass the facial authentication system.
- His second complaint is that in those 23 minutes a a total of 137 transactions were made. So many transactions in such a short time should have raised some concerns. Most banks usually have a monitoring team to keep an eye on such unusual transactions.
What does Revolut have to say about this?
Revolut has not commented on this matter at this stage handled by the Financial Ombudsman. Revolut has not issued any refunds yet.
However, the UK has now adopted a new rule under whichobliges banks and financial institutions to return money to victims of fraud up to £85,000. This fund will be split 50-50 between the sending and receiving company. It is not yet known whether the same rule will apply to Revolut.
Revolut-related financial fraud cases are on the rise
This is not the first time a Revolut customer has been defrauded. Indeed, this has become a common occurrence recently.
In 2023, UK national fraud and cybercrime reporting center Action Fraud received over 10,000 reports of fraud against Revolut. BBC Panorama investigated the matter and spoke to 8 former employees to understand the root cause of the problem.
The investigation revealed that Revolut focuses on the development and introduction of new products to the market on maintaining its current services.
However, Revolut denied all these rumors. She agreed that it has a “high performance culture” and “expects to deliver good customer outcomes,” but at the same time takes safety very seriously.
All new products pass through extensive risk assessment process and government approval before being released. In addition, it has established a financial crime prevention team, which constitutes one third of its employees.
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