Who should foot the bill for cyber scams?

SS: As the problem has grown in a range of countries, so has the debate between government, banks and technology companies over who should foot the bill when the money cannot be recovered.

In the US, the question of who must pay remains unanswered — and is becoming politically fraught. Some senior Democrats want the banks to take more responsibility, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is investigating Zelle, an account-to-account payments system owned by a consortium of large US banks which has been used by scammers.

Banks are instead trying to stick the blame on technology companies including Meta, TikTok and Snapchat, where many scams originate.

In the meantime it is victims like Pitet who are paying the price. The fact Citibank was aware of multiple similar incidents to his suggests an unwillingness to act, the lawyer says. “If they knew people were regularly being ripped off in this way, why didn’t they do anything about it?” he asks. “Banks can, and should, do more.”

Are we not the only Western country that does not have a government department just for this? It blows me away that someone can just lose everything in a blip. And nowhere to turn? You’re just shit out of luck?

Wife works for a bank in fraud. It’s not easy. Some people are really good at it. Most fool people who are incredibly incompetent. There’s some that they’ll warn that whatever they are doing is fraud and they’ll insist it’s fine. There have been times they would close people’s accounts because they don’t want to be responsible for the insane amount of money they insist on sending someone for things like crypto.