Scammers took £3,500 from my business Monzo account

It was supposed to be an exciting summer for theatre producer Hannah Crawford.

Her company, Thistle and Rose Arts, was set for a packed schedule at the Edinburgh Fringe, but instead she has been mired in stress after scammers took £3,500 from the company’s account.

It left her unable to pay staff ahead of the company’s biggest event, and she was left chasing Monzo to speak to one of their banking specialists.

Fraudsters took £3,500 from my small business and I had to chase Monzo for weeks 

In early July, Hannah was woken by a phone call from an unknown number claiming to be from Monzo. They said someone had tried to spend £7,000 and £3,000 at John Lewis and eBay, and they would send a text to confirm the payment hadn’t been approved.

At this point, they knew Hannah’s address, email address and started asking questions about recent transactions. 

The fraudsters said more payments had been made on the card and Hannah needed to use her Face ID to approve the payments in order for them to be refunded.

Hannah, who was ill and disoriented, approved the payments to a money transfer service before hanging up and realising what had happened.

The criminals called back to ask about Hannah’s overdraft, asking for her to extend it, still assuring Hannah they were from Monzo. They said they could see she had contacted Monzo’s customer support team in the app, leading her to believe they had access to the account.

This is often a tactic used by scammers who assume customers will contact a bank’s customer support team, but they don’t actually have access to chat logs. It is why the scammers asked Hannah to authorise the payments. 

Monzo has since confirmed no-one else had access to the account.

Hannah then contacted Monzo’s online support team, which logged a dispute and said it would get back to her as soon as there was an update. She asked to speak to someone over the phone, and Monzo said it would arrange a call-back within 24 hours.

Given she had just lost £3,500 of investor money, Hannah asked to speak to someone immediately. She was unfortunately ignored.

Over the following weeks, Hannah asked for a phone call with a business banking specialist several times to no avail.

She was passed around several advisers – from customer services, to fraud, to wellbeing and then business banking.

She was offered a call with the wellbeing team, after disclosing some personal information, but she was still none the wiser about the state of the fraud investigation nor when she might expect a response.

Four weeks had passed and Hannah still hadn’t heard from Monzo in regards to the fraud investigation. In the meantime, she had been able to crowdfund another week of cash flow – but the situation had become desperate.

She says the experience has been ‘hellish’.  

Hannah added: ‘It’s taken energy from the day to day of our theatre show. We were considering cancelling, which comes with reputational damage.

‘One of the companies said they’re not comfortable with keeping the money with us because it’s not secure. It has been a confidence hit to me as a producer.’

Five weeks later, after This Is Money contacted Monzo, the bank said it recognised Hannah’s experience fell below its usual standards. 

The online bank has fully reimbursed Hannah the £3,500and has offered a £345 compensation payment, too.

A spokesperson for Monzo said: ‘We’re sorry for this customer’s experience which simply does not meet our usual high standards. 

‘Our support and communication should have been much better here and that’s why in addition to reimbursing, we’ve spoken to the customer and offered compensation.’