Earlier this year, my 18-year-old daughter received a phone call from a stranger claiming he was calling from Safaricom customer care. He spoke authoritatively but quite rudely, demanding her M-Pesa PIN and other personal details.
Being quite fresh out of school conditioning mental mindset of respect for authority, the young lass fell for the rogue’s demands.
Well, he wasn’t quite so successful in his shenanigans as he found the princely sum of Sh17.40 in her M-Pesa account and, by good fortune, she had not signed up for the mobile loan programme M-Shwari and Fuliza of which he also demanded to know what her limits were.
She was shaken to the core but managed to get a very understanding genuine Safaricom Care representative who helped her block her account and put in the necessary digital guardrails shortly thereafter.
The rogue slithered off to make other calls to her more discerning close relatives whose numbers he, by some dint of nothing other than black magic, had managed to get from her favourites contact list.
I was moved to recall this story after receiving a fairly informative newsletter from Anjarwalla & Khanna Advocates, updating clients regarding a landmark ruling against the banking industry that has been given by the Court of Appeal in the United Kingdom.
The newsletter highlights the case between Fiona Lorraine Phillipp versus Barclays Bank UK PLC. Fiona and her husband fell victim to a fraud in March 2018, transferring their life savings amounting to £700,000 (approximately Sh105 million) that were held in Barclays Bank, into a foreign account held in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
This was despite a police officer warning Fiona about the potential for fraud but she thought, based on what the fraudster had communicated to her, that she was moving the funds into safety to protect them from fraud.
After the funds went into that inglorious sinkhole that is known as “Lord help me what the **** have I done?”, Fiona brought a claim against Barclays Bank for breach of its duty of care in effecting the transfer of funds.
Her argument was that there were various features of the payment she made, as well as of her situation, that should have alerted an ordinary prudent bank acting with reasonable skill and care to a possibility of fraudulent activity.
The bank should have delayed the transfers and investigated the matter before effecting the transfer. I will save you the legalese behind this argument and […]
