A man has been left with a £18,000 debt and a crippled credit score after fraudsters managed to steal his identity and open bank accounts in his name before going on a spending spree.
Jamie Cavanagh, 37, a civil engineer from East Grinstead, West Sussex, received a letter in January from HSBC showing he spent more than £12,000 on a credit card despite having never banked or dealt with them in his life.
He then discovered an HSBC current account with an overdraft of £5,000 had been opened in his name and “maxed out”.
Jamie immediately flagged the payments to HSBC as fraud and believes that someone managed to steal his identity by breaking into his letterbox and using his personal information to open the accounts.
The majority of funds were withdrawn in £350 chunks from bank machines dotted across south London, while card payments were also made to retailers, such as Tesco, Sports Direct and several chicken shops.
“At first I thought somebody had sent the wrong post, until I saw my name and address at the top of it,” Jamie said.
“In January my credit score was 930 out of 1,000, so nigh on perfect. Come February, March, it had nosedived to 620 out of 1,000.
“When I look at my outstanding finances, it shows that I’m in arrears for £12,820 on a credit card account with HSBC and £5,130 for an overdraft on a current account with HSBC.
“I’ve never banked with HSBC in my life.”
Jamie noticed the problem when he found a letter from HSBC in his letterbox on 21 January, even though he banks with NatWest and Santander.
To his horror, the envelope contained a credit card statement which showed he had been on a spending spree and now owed more than £10,000.
“I saw there were reams and reams of cash withdrawals on this credit card, so I was trying to figure out what had gone on,” he said.
“I discovered that somebody had taken out the card in my name, managed to get themselves a credit of £13,000.
“It showed that they had managed to take out £10,000 in cash at various cashpoints across south London, in Catford, Croydon, Bromley, Orpington, Lewisham…”
The fraudulent purchases range from spending a few quid in shops, including Tesco, Joe & The Juice and Lazy Chef, to withdrawing hundreds of pounds.
Jamie informed HSBC who said he would have to visit one of their branches with three forms of identification.
He also called Sussex Police who advised him to file a report with Action Fraud, the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime, and he registered with the Credit Industry Fraud Avoidance System, a fraud prevention service, which placed a marker against his credit report, to flag the fraud.
He would later learn that the fraudsters had also checked his credit rating by creating an account on ClearScore with a different email address.
In total, they have spent £12,820 on the credit card and £5,130 on the debit card, money which on paper, Jamie now owes the bank.
HSBC told Jamie it would take around two weeks for it to carry out an investigation.
“Two weeks go by and I’m thinking what the hell is going on here,” he said. ”I eventually get through and they inform me that the investigation is still ongoing and that it can actually take up to seven weeks.”
During this time, Jamie repeatedly received letters demanding repayments, threatening a default notice.
By 6 April, 14 weeks after Jamie first reported the fraud to HSBC, he still had not received any news. “I was quite upset as you can imagine,” he said. “Not only that, but they hadn’t closed the credit account.”
Again, Jamie was told the investigation was still ongoing.
Jamie was able to raise an official complaint with the bank, which he was told could take up to five days to process.
After posting about his ordeal on Twitter, he received a message from HSBC: “Good morning Jamie, thank you for reaching out to us, we would really like to get this matter sorted as quickly as possible. If you could join me in a private chat by clicking the link below, I can investigate this further…”
He has since been sent another link and asked to upload his identification, but at the time of writing, the credit card has still not been blocked and Jamie’s credit score remains 300 points down.
An HSBC spokesperson said: “Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. We take all allegations of fraud extremely seriously and this case is being looked into.”
PA
