Should i sue bank?

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purplealien

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A few months back i put my wedding dress on the buy and sell. Two people e mailed me back saying they were interested. In the end i sold it to the highest bidder. He told me that he was living in Holland and was buying it for his daughter - he said that he had a client in Dublin that owed him 6,000 euro. He asked if this client of his could send me a bank draft, he told me to take out of that the money for my dress and post the rest on.
Anyway to make a long story short - i received the bank draft and brought it to my bank, i asked them to deposit 1,500 into my account (that was meant to be for my wedding dress) and give me a bank draft for the rest so that i could wire the money over in the credit union. Got the bankdraft and brought it to the credit union only to be told that they dont wire money anymore. So i brought the draft back to the bank and asked them to cash it so i could wire it with western union - they told me that i'd have to go into the city because they weren't able to give out that amount of money, so they gave me a bank draft for my bank in town. Drove into my bank in town and handed them the bankdraft and asked them to cash it so i could wire the money and they did so immediately. Then proceeded to Western Union to wire the money.
Three days later the bank got onto me to tell me that the draft had been a fraud and i now owed them the money. My question is (finally!) Am i liable to pay all that money back when
a i thought a bank draft was as good as cash
b isn't it the banks job to check this out before they start handing over cash and
c they have insurance against such things happening.
Im after receiving a solicitors letter from them saying that they want me to start making payments straight away or they'll put me on to the bad creditors list. Should i sue them or just cut my losses and start paying monthly installments?
Any help would be much appreciated.
 
Hi Purplealien

This is a real tragedy. You have fallen victim to a well known scam which is becoming increasingly common-place.

I don't think the bank has any liability. You made a lodgement. The bank accepts the lodgement from an established customer in good faith. The draft or cheque does not clear until it is cleared by the paying bank on whom the draft was drawn.

I think you owe the bank €4,500. You certainly don't need to sue them. If you feel you have a case, you can go to the Financial Services Ombudsman and save yourself the legal costs.

Askaboutmoney has highlighted these before. And it appears that Buy & Sell used to have a prominent warning about it:

http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showpost.php?p=15096&postcount=53

http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showpost.php?p=85344&postcount=110


Brendan
 
Hi,

Sorry to hear that you have suffered this financial loss.

This previous AAM thread might explain the scam in detail.
 
purplealien said:
...He asked if this client of his could send me a bank draft, he told me to take out of that the money for my dress and post the rest on.

Did you recieve a bad cheque or a bank draft from this "client"? Surly if you recieved the bank draft the person who paid for it should be liable?
 
Itchy

This is a well known scam. There is no client in Dubin. The bank draft is a forgery in the first place. The only recourse alien has is to the guy who bought the dress, but I suspect that he would be difficult to find.

Brendan
 
I tried to sell a phone through buy and sell and more or less the same thing happened.

The guy said he had to settle some bills with the shipping company and was sending a bulk of money to be split between me and the shipping company ... what ever was left he asked me to send back to him. I recevied €3000 worth of dodgy postal orders and an AIB cheque in the post from Nigera.

The cheque looked like it was printed on a home computer so brought the whole lot to the guards. About 2 weeks later I get a call from this guy (calling from the Netherlands) wanting his money, told him they police had it and he was to contact them ... I've heard nothing from him since.

The last bit of the saga happened about two weeks ago when someone from customs called me saying they had receive a letter with more cheques about 6 weeks before totaling €2000.

Seems to be a popular scam, I have every sympathy for you. The postal orders i got looked spot on .. was just the cheque that gave it away.
 
I think Brendan and others have answered the question of wheter or not the OP has any recourse to the bank and sueellen as linked to a previous thread on the issue.

It looks like this thread is going to be too troublesome to moderate at this stage, so I am locking it.

I have linked to this thread in the Key Post on scams to avoid in the Good Deals/Bad Deals Consumer Issues forum.
 
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