I’m watching the docuseries Love Rats on Netflix, a series about people who have been scammed out of thousands of pounds by their partners / friends etc. It’s a UK series, if it’s not available elsewhere think of it like Tinder Swindler – mostly women meeting men via online dating who then aren’t who they say they are and manage to scam them out of a significant amount of money.
A lot of these people have lost so much, £50,000-£200,000, and none of them are able to get any back even if the person committing fraud against them has been arrested and charged – why is that?
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Cause it’s unlikely that the guy who defrauded them and hundreds of others actually still has all that money in his bank account when he gets arrested. Probably blew it on stupid shit.
And the money they have left probably gets blown on lawyer and court fees. Can’t get money from the arrested fraudster if he doesn’t have any.
Because you can’t get blood from a stone: most likely these ‘people’ who steal a persons life savings are not so good at saving money. By the time they are caught; all the money is gone.
Who is going to give them the money back? It’s probably gone by the time they are caught.
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People don’t scam other people to keep the money sitting around in a bank account. They spend it and it’s gone. If the victims are lucky there are assets that can be reclaimed or some money left over.
You can’t get back stuff that’s gone. Steals your money, buys jewelery for girlfriend, girlfriend disappears or trades jewelery for drugs. Poof. Steals money goes to Vegas, gambles it away on Red. Money gone. Steals money cashes out. Hides money somewhere. Money gone.
The money’s usually gone. Sometimes the courts can force a sale of whatever assets the fraudsters have accumulated, but it’s never enough to make everyone whole again.
One of the reasons I left law is because of stuff like this. Society only works because people believe in justice, but the sad fact is that justice only works if there’s a good perpetrator that’s found guilty.
Let’s say someone burns your house down and your house insurance only covers part of the repairs. You go after the arsonist for the remainder.
If the judge says the plaintiff owes you all the money for repairs plus punitive damages, you get a judgement in your favour. On paper, it sounds like justice has been served. What if the plaintiff doesn’t have assets? What if he doesn’t have a job? We’ll now he’s a bad perpetrator and know matter how guilty he is found in the court of law you will never have justice.
The best you can hope for is prison time or execution in some states, and even then you’ll still have lost some of your house for nothing.
Get it back from who? The person who committed the fraud would need to be caught, convicted and, most importantly, have enough assets to be able to repay their victims. In those cases, the victims typically do get their money back. But those are pretty rare cases.
Scams aren’t fraud. The victim willingly provided information or sent the money to the scammer, and thus are held liable.
Fraudulent activity occurs when the original holder of (typically) funds are taken out of their account or whatever without consent or fore knowledge.
Source: Used to work on the fraud team for debit cards and deposit accounts for a major US bank
PS: be with a bank that has fraud protection and don’t lie to the guy you call about obvious shit, like claiming you were defrauded but the screen shows the card was physically present, and you have your card on you.
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