'He lost thousands' How one bank rescues scam victims

Santander's specialist team aims to save customers from fraudsters offering romance and more. Anna Tims hears their stories

- Anna Tims hears their stories

A widowed pensioner is on the end of the phone, and he's flustered. He's expecting his girlfriend to move in with him next month. He has never met her, but he has photos of a young blonde woman and weeks of texts pledging her devotion.

On an industrial estate in Bootle on Merseyside, Clare is trying to deflate his dreams. She is a call handler on Santander's Break the Spell team, part of the high street bank's fraud prevention department. It is her job to convince the man that his girlfriend is actually a scammer who has defrauded him of his savings.

Fraudsters stole more than £30m from Santander customers last year by conning them into making payments for fake goods or services.

Across the UK banking sector, £213m was lost in scams where people were tricked into sending money to bank accounts operated by criminals in the first six months of 2024, according to the trade body UK Finance.

The prevalence and complexity of scams has soared since the pandemic, and so has the financial hit to banks and building societies. Many were signed up to a voluntary industry scheme to reimburse victims who were not unduly negligent, but new rules introduced in October have made such refunds mandatory, so there is a new urgency for banks to protect their customers' savings.

The 23 staff on the Break the Spell team deal with customers who have been so thoroughly taken in by a scam that they refuse to accept they are being defrauded.

Most have been bamboozled into paying their savings into fake investment schemes, or the pockets of criminal gangs who woo them online and promise romance.

They are referred to Break the Spell by the bank's fraud contact centre once ordinary interventions fail to persuade them that their transactions are suspect, and it is up to the team to win their trust and save them from themselves. It can take months.