Unauthorized transactions
frauds
The law firm is one of the few on the market that specializes in pursuing claims resulting from unauthorized payment transactions.
What is an unauthorized payment transaction?
Pursuant to art. 40 section 1 of the Act a payment transaction is considered authorized if the payer has agreed to execute the payment transaction in the manner provided for in the contract between the payer and his supplier. When interpreting this standard, it should be stated that an unauthorized payment transaction occurs when the payer did not want to make a given transfer or his account was debited without his acceptance, in a manner agreed with the bank.
To put it simply, any debit to your bank account that you did not consent to may constitute an unauthorized payment transaction if additional conditions are met.
What is an unauthorized payment transaction?
and frauds:
1. A call from a “bank employee”. Fraudsters may impersonate your bank’s hotline number or bank employee’s details (so-called spoofing) Most often, they try to make you worry by talking about an alleged attempt to steal funds from your account. They ask you to install software on your phone or computer that will scan your device to detect malware and block transactions.
In fact, these programs allow you to track your activity
and thus obtaining a login and password for electronic banking or authentication data in a mobile application, e.g. through “remote desktop” programs, e.g. TeamViewer QuickSupport or any desk.
2. Text messages pretending to be from companies supplying electricity, gas or other reliable sources. Fraudsters inform about alleged arrears in payments and send a link to make an additional payment (e.g. PLN 1 for a courier parcel). Clicking on it redirects you to a fake website that resembles the websites of payment intermediaries. In this way, fraudsters obtain the payer’s credentials and make unauthorized transfers.
3. Theft of credit or debit cards.Fraudsters can take advantage from stolen or counterfeit payment cards, making illegal and unauthorized transactions on victims’ bank accounts.
4. Fictitious investments. Scammers offer high-return investments, especially cryptocurrencies, e.g. Bitcoins encourage customers to transfer small amounts of money and then “clean their bank accounts” of all the money.
5. Taking out loans “without leaving home”. It is more and more common that criminals, after obtaining the victim’s credentials, take out loans or credits only via means of distance communication (e.g. banking applications) and transfer the funds immediately after granting the loan. The vast majority of banks treat this type of transaction as authorized and the loan as granted under a valid loan agreement, even though the act of concluding these agreements is preceded by an unauthorized transaction.
What are the bank's obligations when it receives a report of an unauthorized transaction?
Pursuant to Art. 46 of the Act, which is usually the legal basis for the claim – in the event of an unauthorized payment transaction, the payer’s supplier (usually a bank) is obliged to immediately refund the amount of the unauthorized payment transaction to the payer, and if the payer uses a payment account, restore the debited payment account to the state it would have existed. , if no unauthorized payment transaction had taken place (section 1).
As a rule, the bank should return the funds within D + 1, where D is the day the bank obtains information about the unauthorized transaction.
What is the practice of banks?
The vast majority of banks negatively consider complaints submitted by their customers, thus refusing to refund lost funds. Banks often wrongly attribute to customers gross negligence, e.g. providing their identification data to the interlocutor, failure to read the warnings published on the bank’s website, or lack of up-to-date software or simply not taking care of their own interests and properly authenticating the transaction. However, it is difficult to agree with such views in a situation where payers are victims of precisely planned and organized criminal actions using advanced information technologies.
It is worth pointing out that the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, after analyzing consumer complaints and banks’ reactions and responses to complaints regarding reports of the theft of money from bank accounts, charged several commercial banks in Poland with violating the collective interests of consumers in connection with improper conduct regarding unauthorized transactions.
What steps should you take?
After immediately reporting to the bank the detection of an unauthorized payment transaction, filing a police report on suspicion of committing a crime, blocking bank cards, filing an appeal against a negatively resolved “complaint”, and possibly intervening with the Financial Ombudsman, the only thing left to do is file a lawsuit against the supplier for payment of lost funds resulting from making an unauthorized transaction on the customer’s account.
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It is worth reminding all the time, following the campaign of the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection
"You lose your data, you lose your money!":
- Never give or send your online banking or mobile application login and password to anyone. A real bank employee won’t ask you about this.
- Never click on links sent via text message. Confirm any arrears yourself by contacting, for example, your gas supplier or courier company.
- If you receive a call from someone claiming to be a bank employee, hang up, find the hotline number yourself and confirm whether someone called you.
- Never install software from links sent or during a telephone conversation regarding your account or the funds accumulated on it.
