The company has since been dissolved, according to Companies House. He was also able to establish that all of his £120,000 had gone from that account, as £20,000 had been withdrawn over six days. Through his contacts he was able to establish that the account the money had been sent to was a NatWest business account in the name of Graceak Ltd. The email from Steed & Steed had been hacked and what Peter had been sent was the fraudster’s account details, to which he had sent the £120,000. Within a few hours the true horror of what had happened emerged. At first I thought it was an error and went straight to the Lloyds branch,” he says. A week later my wife asked me why we had not yet received a receipt from the solicitor so I called the firm and, to my shock, I was told it had not received the funds. “When I got home I emailed Steed & Steed to confirm I had made the payment and later received a reply from it confirming the funds had been received. Eight hours later he received a text message from Lloyds to say the funds had been transferred to the receiving account. Three days later, Peter went to the Braintree branch of Lloyds bank where he instructed staff to make a Chaps electronic payment for £120,000 to Steed & Steed, handing over the account details he had been sent in the email and his debit card. We have heard nothing from the police or Action Fraud even though we have the name of the woman who ran the account This was the first contact he had had with anyone at the law firm, he says.
Real football 2012 money hack code#
Later that morning, an email duly arrived with the firm’s account and sort code detailed in a Word file attachment. He rang because he was due to pay his grandmother’s inheritance tax bill to HM Revenue & Customs and needed the law firm’s bank details.
The extraordinary story started in late August when Peter telephoned his family’s long-used firm of solicitors, Steed & Steed, based in Braintree, Essex. It also exposes systemic flaws in the banking system that make it easy for fraudsters to operate unchecked and banks’ indifference to customers who have lost life-changing sums of money. The couple’s story will serve as a warning to anyone about to send a large sum of money to a solicitor.
0 kommentar(er)
