‘I woke up and realised €5,140 was missing from my account’ – Revolut customer had money stolen by fraudsters while he slept

The comments come after this publication presented the fast-growing fintech with another batch of cases of customers who have been in contact with it ­after their accounts were fraudulent accessed and had money stolen.

One cyber-security expert, who said he never responds to scam texts and emails, had more than €5,000 taken from his account when he was in bed and not using his phone. He insisted he did not authorise the payment.

Revolut refused to refund him, but relented when contacted by this publication.

Earlier this month, the Irish Independent queried a number of cases with ­Revolut where its customers experienced fraudulent activity or had their accounts shut down without explanation.

In response to the latest bunch of cases, Revolut said it had ­taken a second look at them and engaged directly with the ­customers.

Many of these customers had complained they could not get what they regard as a proper response from the money app when they tried to get funds returned to them after fraudsters struck.

Bank of Ireland responds to Revolut savings account move

The customer, who works in cyber ­security and says he does not respond to suspicious emails or calls, woke up to find his phone was going through a resetting process.

“Once I restored my apps, I logged into Revolut and realised money was ­missing,” he said. He then realised €5,140 had been taken from his account.

Payments went to a UK ­Revolut account, he said.

He reported the matter to Revolut, “who will not engage and accept there was an issue and say my Revolut app was compromised”.

After this publication took up his case, he got his money back from Revolut but no acknowledgment from the company or an explanation for what happened.

“If it wasn’t for the Irish Independent, I would not have got my money back and would have been left high and dry,” the IT expert said.

Revolut told one customer, whose case was also queried by this publication, to engage its financial crime division, and told another customer to contact its complaints department.

Others were told to take cases to the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman’s office in Dublin. These people had all said they were unable to get ­responses from Revolut until the Irish Independent sought answers on their behalf.

Asked whether there is a pattern of people getting brushed off by Revolut when they are scammed, the bank said it took fraud and the industry-wide risk of customers being coerced by organised criminals “incredibly seriously”.

“We have robust protections in place for our millions of customers and ­analyse over half a billion transactions a month,” it said.

“In 2023, we prevented over €550m of potential fraud losses to our customers globally. This, despite more than a million new customers joining Revolut every month.”

The company said it now had 2.7 million customers in Ireland.

Revolut was asked whether its systems are being hacked, because some customers have claimed accounts were cleaned out while they slept.

The company had insisted the customers had entered authentication codes to verify the payments.

Revolut was also asked whether there are other problem with its systems, especially with the ­virtual cards of customer accounts.

“Revolut systems continue to run without issue, which includes the robust protections we have in place for our millions of customers,” it said.

When asked how scammers are gaining access to accounts, as a number of customers claim they did not interact with fraudsters, Revolut said this was a complex and sensitive issue that involved criminals.

“Revolut does not publicly disclose these details because publicising them can inform criminals how others have been duped, which could exacerbate the problem,” it said.

It added that in common with other banks, it was using a range of measures to protect customers, but fraudsters were increasingly targeting consumers directly.

It said that when there were instances of fraud, banks and other financial institutions should be the last line of defence, not the only line of defence.