We recently lost our life savings, to an elaborate investment fraud.  Thinking we were investing in a 1-year fixed rate bond with Prudential, we transferred total of £150,000, in 7 payments, from our Virgin Money account, to the fraudsters account, held with Bank Of America, in London.

There is a scheme most banks have signed up to, it's called Contingent Reimbursement Model (CRM), which states, "customers should be refunded money lost to Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud (i.e. you authorise your bank to transfer money to a fraudulent account), unless they were Grossly Negligent". CRM is not worth the paper it's written on.  Most banks, including, and specially, Virgin Money, use any excuse to paint you as "Grossly Negligent". In our case, they gave us a set of instructions over the phone (not in writing, no great detail, no help from them) just once, before the 1st payment.  We carried out the checks/instructions, to the best of our ability as lay people.  But they're now saying we failed to carry them out.  They never gave us any more warnings before other payments, no pop up alerts, or phone calls, even though we've since discovered, "multiple payments" in a so-called investment, is a giant Red Flag.  A real firm, e.g, Prudential, would have asked for the entire sum being invested,  in one payment.

I want all banks, who are currently enjoying obscene record profits,  to fully reimburse customers, who lose money to fraud, in all but exceptional circumstances (for example, if the customer is part of the fraud).  TSB are currently the only bank who offer this type of guarantee.  I want the government to pass legislation, which forces all banks to do this.  That way, they're compelled to carry out their own detailed checks, before transferring out money.  Had they taken 5 minutes to do that in our case, we would not have lost our money.

If we win, no one will ever lose momey to fraud, and have their life upended by fraudsters.