Having your money stolen by a scammer is traumatic. But not being able to prove that you are a victim is even more difficult to live with, especially since you sometimes have little chance of recovering the stolen sum.
Scams are becoming more and more sophisticated and some scammers manipulate new technologies to perfection to better deceive their victims. After the scams involving fake bank advisors, toll or parcel delivery fraud, or even the hijacking of QR Codes, crooks are showing once again that they have little or no trouble stealing money from the French. All they need is a few simple pieces of information such as the name, first name, telephone number, email or date of birth to pose as the person they want to scam. “Some types of fraud operate on just this minimum verification data about you“, explains Maître Aubane Malvezin, lawyer at the Aix-en-Provence Bar in consumer law and banking law.
In 2023, journalist Thibaut Martinez-Delcayrou paid the price. In his book which he devoted to it The Chameleons: investigation into the fake bank advisor scam, he explains the workings of these banking scams after having investigated with the financial brigade. “Banks are not sufficiently up to date with fraud actions, operators still allow calling with bank numbers and the State is currently turning a blind eye to what is the biggest scam ever perpetrated in France” he confided on the set of BFMTV. But according to him, banking advisor fraud risks quickly becoming “has-been”. Indeed, a new formidable scam is claiming many victims: SIM Swapping.
“It comes straight from the United States and it’s undoubtedly the worst scam“, estimates our lawyer. And for good reason: “with your simple personal information such as your name and telephone number, a fraudster can identify your telephone operator, contact them for you and order a new SIM card to duplicate yours”she explains. “We will not realize what is happening, you will simply no longer have a telephone network for a while and everything that will come from your SIM card will be able to be carried out without your knowledge by the fraudster”. Other processes allow scammers to collect a code that we have just entered on our phone screen, “thanks to sophisticated equipment and although you maintain that you have never given your code or transmitted it of your own free will to the fraudster, the bank will refuse to reimburse you, considering that the operation could not have taken place without your agreement“. It is in this sense that this scam scares many people, because it is simply difficult to prove the usurpation of which one is a victim.
“Justice is embarrassed when faced with this type of fraud, because even if we are in good faith, how can the judge form an opinion on whether or not there is serious negligence?” asks Maître Aubane Malvezin. “Justice must be demanding on the burden of proof which rests exclusively on the bank concerning its proper application of reinforced authentication on the contested payment transaction AND the serious negligence that it attributes to its victim client“, she concludes.
Thanks to Maître Aubane Malvezin, lawyer in consumer law and banking law, partner and Vice-President of the Aix association for the defense of consumer rights QUE CHOISIR ENSEMBLE.
