Banks must refund fraud in five days but losses capped at £85,000

Carol Alexander, a lecturer in Financial Markets, was tricked into downloading software that gave fraudsters access to two of her bank accounts. They then stole nearly £80,000.

“They emptied everything that they had transferred from Santander and everything from Tide,” she told the BBC.

“I collapsed, it was so awful. I felt I had colluded. It was like some sort of coercive control thing, it was horrible,” she said.

Mrs Alexander managed to get a full refund from Santander, which returned £17,000 to her the next day. But it took nearly 18 months for her to get her money back from online bank, Tide.

“They initially offered to refund me £13.12 after having £63,000 removed from my account, they said that was all they had been able to recover. I nearly fell off my chair.”

She eventually went to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which ruled in her favour and ordered Tide to refund her the full amount, plus interest.

A spokesperson for Tide said: “We’re always enhancing our systems to keep up with the complex and evolving tactics used by fraudsters who maliciously target our members, and since Mrs Alexander’s case we have further improved our fraud prevention, detection and response capabilities.”