Summary

Someone (known by Barclays and maybe now the police) stole nearly £42,000 from Jocelyn Graham in July 2022 by stealing a cheque either from First Direct clearing house or in the post on the way to First Direct.

Barclays assisted in the theft by providing banking services to the thief without adequate checks on identity, in breach of FCA regulations, such that they could impersonate Jocelyn Graham (as Jocelyn Starkie, her married, but not used name), bank the cheque and then launder the money through other finanical instruments (known to Barclays but not told to the victim or the police), again, without adequate checking or reporting by Barclays.

Once informed of the the theft, Barclays failed in their obligation to take complaints, failed to investigate the theft once a complaint had been submitted, failed to provide evidence in time to both the ombudsman and the police, despite receiving an extension from the ombudsman and failed to provide full evidence to the police and ombudsman when asked despite the evidence being available within their systems.

After reviewing evidence, at least one (and perhaps up to 3 further) employees failed to report the laundering of the stolen money to an appropriate responsible person in breach of the Proceeds of Crime Act. It is possible that one of these employees did report the laundering, in which case that responsible person failed to forward the information to the appropriate authorities.

History

2022.06.28 Hay Cassels sent Jocelyn a letter with a cheque for £41,647.09

Jocelyn phoned Hay Cassels to ask for the money to be transferred by BACS as this would be more secure and in her proper name; Jocelyn Graham, not Jocelyn Starkie. Hay Cassels refused and said it was standard practice to send a cheque.

2022.07.04 Jocelyn posted the Cheque to First Direct. There was a letter with it explaining that it should go into the joint account and it was signed on the back of the cheque (Jocelyn Graham) so they could compare the signature. Jocelyn also endorsed the cheque with the bank account and sort code so that no mistake could be made.

2022.07.12 Jocelyn called First Direct to see whether they had the cheque. They said they all get sent to a clearing house - there is no record of it arriving because they send it straight on.

2022.07.13 Jocelyn, Stephen and their daughter went on holiday, but managed to check on First Direct account occasionally; and realised that the cheque still had not been paid in.

2022.07.17 While on holiday Jocelyn emailed her mother to ask the executor of the will (Jocelyn’s Uncle) to ask the solictor to ask the bank to cancel the cheque thinking it had been lost in the post. This was done at some point but not that day.

2022.07.18 (WE THINK!) The cheque was paid into an account set up with false identity in the name Jocelyn Starkie

2022.07.21 Jocelyn, Stephen and their daughter returned from holiday

2022.07.21 Jocelyn tried to check that the cheque had gone in and it had not. That morning Jocelyn phoned Hay Cassels to cancel the cheque, because it was assumed it had been lost in the post. They said it had been paid into an account. That day they looked at the photos of the cheque online and told us the sort code and bank account that the cheque had been paid into;

Sort Code: 20-26-86

Acc No: 73 59 41 30

The sort code shows that it is a Barclays account and we are not, and never have been Barclays customers. We checked using the First Direct app to see if we could pay into the account and the account name is Jocelyn Starkie.

Jocelyn reported the crime through the police web site and got a crime number: 35/52277/22.

Jocelyn and Stephen both tried to report through Barclays Fraud line and couldn’t because we are not customers so could not pass identity checks.

Jocelyn waited on hold for a long time and was eventually told “We don’t take complaints”

Jocelyn contacted Action Fraud, first of all by alling their number; 0300 123 2040. They said it wasn’t fraud, it was theft and so couldn’t log a complaint.

Someone from First Direct contacted Jocelyn to say that they had heard about the problem and that they had no evidence of the cheque being at First Direct and that if we found out any more could we contact them.

Stephen contacted the Post Office to register a complaint

Jocelyn wrote a complaint to the financial ombudsman in order to start recording information and also because Barclays had refused to take the complaint.

Jocelyn wrote to Anthony Browne MP

2022.07.23: Jocelyn and Stephen went to Barclays in Cambridge, were kept sat around for about 40 minutes and then spoke to the manager Dan Jones who filed a fraud report and a complaint online. Dan Jones said he would phone back on the following Monday. The complaint reference was: CRK JFH JL 68

2022.07.25: Jocelyn lodged a complaint with Action Fraud online

2022.07.26; Action Fraud wrote back with a holding email

2022.07.28 Jocelyn and Stephen sent authorization letters to Tony Heatherington of the Mail on Sunday to investigate on their behalf. Barclys wrote first letter saying they were investigating;

2022.07.29: Jocelyn wrote back to the solicitor to provide a full passport photos

Jocelyn asked Hay Cassels for the image of the cheque.

2022.08.04 Jocelyn and Stephen wrote to Dan Jones at Barclays because we had heard no information; no reply was ever received following this.

2022.08.05 Barclays letter saying that they were still looking into the complaint and would write back again by 27th August. No further letters were received

2022.08.09 Because Hay Cassels have refused to send a copy of the cheque, we retained Anton Bilinksi to write a solicitor’s letter to Hay Cassels formally asking for the scan of the cheque. We set up a Zoom meeting to discuss this for 2022.08.12

2022.08.12 Zoom meeting with Anton Bilinski

2022.08.19 Hay Cassels acknowledge receipt of the solicitors letter but still require Executors permission to release the scan. Jocelyn called Donald immediately to ask him to call Hay Cassels which he did

2022.08.23 Action Fraud / NFIB wrote back saying: “On this occasion, based on the information currently available, it has not been possible to identify a line of enquiry which a law enforcement organisation in the United Kingdom could pursue.”

2022.08.24 Anton Bilinsky (solicitor) informed us that he had written to Hay Cassels again asking them for a copy of the cheque.

2022.08.26 Anton Bilinski emailed to say that he spoke to Hay Cassels on the Wednesday and Valerie Troop was on holiday, so asked for someone else to work on it; Raymond Brown was named as the person to look into it and that he would call on 30th August.

Jocelyn emailed Raymond Brown directly to expedite the scan oif the cheque and received no reply

2022.08.26 (we think) Jocelyn and Stephen phoned the number quoted on Barclay’s complaint letters and discovered that the people who replied are a company called Paragon and are not Barclays - they therefore knew nothing more than “the fraud people are investigating”. We asked how the police could ask for evidence from Barclays and were given an e-mail address. We sent this address to the Matt the police constable on the case.

2022.08.26 Barclays miss their own date to reply to the complaints and we never had another letter again

2022.08.30 Raymond Brown called Anton Bilinski and Anton emailed Jocelyn and he said the copy of the cheque will be sent that day (from Hay Cassels)

2022.09.01 Jocelyn called Barclays to find out what was happening in the investigation and was told that the case had been closed

2022.09.03 Jocelyn and Stephen went into Barclays in Cambridge again to find out what is going on, because Barclays have provided no more information and said the case was closed. They talked to Ben Auld. The meeting was recorded and and annotated video version is available on a private YouTube channel with interesting points at the following times;

Beginning: Jocelyn explained the problem but some was missed from right at the beginning

7:48 Explanation of the back of the cheque and how the solicitors have told us about the information on the cheque (at this point we did not have a copy of the cheque)

12:03 onwards: Account and Sort Code provided to Ben Auld

16:56 onwards Driving License seems to have been provided

19:35 onwards More driving license - uploaded herself - showed us the license. THe photo does not resemble Jocelyn in any way. The photo on the driving license is also odd in that it is in sepia so looks decades old. Driving licence renewals requires that a photo is current (within the last month) so it is impossible that this is a valid un-doctored image of a driving license.

22:47 Changed name

26:04 Fuller explanation; Opened the account and changed the name

27:39; Also quite sure that the person in the driving license isnt the person who showed picture when opening account

28:30 Picture shown to Stephen & Jocelyn. We see an image of a middle aged black lady. She is sitting on a couch and wearing tinted glasses such that you cannot properly see her eyes. It would be very difficult to identify this woman.

29:13 Opened the account with driving license (he thinks genuine). Driving license is 3 1/2 years ago. We believe this license is not geniune (for reasons previously described)

31:55 Four weeks after opening, changed the name on the account. This is a date AFTER the date the cheque was written. So this was not picked up when processing the cheque.

34:00 Thinks the name change is a fake document

34:47 Recognised that this is a huge hole in security

35:44 He might have flagged that the name is so different if he had come across this

42:25 Document was brought into a branch. Jocelyn: Which branch? No reply

43:45 Fraud team keep it very tight in-house

44:28 Don’t know what branch - does know who it was who accepted the name change. CCTV therefore is not being checked and remains unavailable to the police.

45:34 Changed their name after the date of the cheque.

46:15 Can’t find the person who signed off on the name change

47:25 He does think the name change was done by post - sent to Leicester

51:10 Conversation about endorsement

51:49 Definitely organised - he would say its mail fraud

53:20 Paid the cheque in at a Post Office

54:11 Definitely organised crime from what he sees on the bank statement

56:15 Gave details for Ben Auld to call Jocelyn

56:52 The account is not open. The case is still open though.

Jocelyn sent all this new information to Tony Heatherington who wrote back Wednesday night 7th apologising and explaining what had happened so far.

2022.09.04 Jocelyn updated information to the ombudsman including her conversation with Heidi at Barclays the week before when she was told the case had been closed

2022.09.04 Anton Bilinski emailed with the copy of the cheque provided by Hay Cassels.

2022.09.06 Ben Auld wrote back saying that he had spoken to someone in the fraud department and he thinks they were investigating; “With regards to the signature , it does not look like we took a signature from the customer as we have none on record.”

Also Matt Phillips directly asked Hay Cassels for a copy of the cheque as they still haven’t provided it.

2022.09.17 Tony Heatherington wrote back with more information from Barclays saying that they would not budge - the only was to pursue things was to ask Uncle Donald to ask Hay-Cassels to ask Royal Bank of Scotland (the cheque issuer) to start an inter-bank investigation. Jocelyn did this and we recieved answers from Hay-Cassels to say that they had done this.

2022.09.23 We received an email from the ombudsman saying that the case was awaiting allocation to an investigator

2022.09.25 Tony Heatherington and The Mail on Sunday publish a full page article on the case from the details we provided and his own investigation through contacts at Barclays

2022.10.07 Valerie Troop from Hay-Cassels emailed saying that she had tried to get RBS to start an inter-bank investigation

2022.10.07 Matt (police) emailed to say he had tried the email address for Barclays and it had said that he should use the on-line portal. He tried and it failed due to Barclay’s IT fault

2022.10.10 Valerie Troop from Hay-Cassels emailed to say that she had been talking to the RBS team

2022.10.10 Shaiful Islam emailed as the investigator at the financial ombudsman

2022.10.12 Matt (police) emailed to say he had tried again and this time succeeded in submitting a request for evidence to Barclays

2022.10.14 Shaiful (the ombudsman) emailed to say that Barclays had provided some information and he would review it

2022.10.27 After Jocelyn called, Shaiful emailed to say that Barclays had not provided sufficient information and that he had asked for more in order to continue with the investigation

2022.11.04 Shaiful emailed to say that Barclays have asked for more time and is still reviewing the information he has requested. He has agreed to more time

2022.11.05 Stephen replied with the recording and notes on important parts of the discussion with Ben Auld

2022.11.11 Jocelyn emailed and called Shaiful to ask about whether Barclays had provided the information. She was told they had not and that the recording had not come through by email

Matt (police) emailed to say that Barclays had provided a name but would not provide more information. Stephen and Jocelyn replied by email expressing surprise because we know they have considerably more pertinant detail that could help in an investigation. We expressed our opinion that they are hiding evidence because it implicates them in their failures.

2022.11.13 Stephen and Jocelyn posted the annotated video of the recording with Ben Auld on a private YouTube channel for Shaiful to review and wrote this web page to document the case

2022.11.29 Shaiful wrote to us with his decision, which was that he awarded the full money plus 8% (per annum we assume) interest.