Santander assembles 23-strong team in bid to hand customers £4,500 boost

Santander assembles 23-strong team in bid to hand customers £4,500 boost
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Santander’s specialist squad is aiming to save customers from the grips of fraudsters offering romance and more. One call handler from the bank has spoken out over Santander’s Break the Spell team, which is part of the high street bank’s fraud prevention department.

The 23 staff on the Break the Spell team deal with customers who have been so thoroughly taken in by a scam that they refuse to accept that they are being defrauded. “Romance scams can go on for years, and if you’re calling from the bank and telling them their wife-to-be isn’t real, you have to be really sensitive,” the worker told the Guardian newspaper.

Santander UK revealed data earlier this year showing victims of romance scams, across all ages from 18 to 93, lose an average of £4,500 each. She said: “Last week he finally accepted that he was being scammed, but then she worked on him and now he’s back in deep.” A second said: “They’ve been so thoroughly groomed that they trust the fraudster more than us, and often they lie to us.

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"One victim had been sucked into a cryptocurrency scam and had spent thousands. He was persuaded he had to pay more in to get his money out, so he took out a loan to fund the payments, had to remortgage his house and lost his marriage.”

“You have to,” she said. “You have to enter into their lives and understand why they are doing what they are doing, and sometimes the hardest cases come home with you.” She said: “This job has taught me it could be any of us. It could be you.”

Peter Staffell, Behavioural Expert at Santander UK, explains: “Scammers are experts at presenting themselves as someone you can trust, someone who ‘gets’ you. They play the long game, building a relationship before executing on their scam and, as our research shows, it’s a natural instinct for many of us to willingly lend a financial hand to someone who we have formed an emotional bond with.

“Then they’ve gone. The scam is complete, and the impact extends far beyond the financial losses, leaving emotional scars and often people feeling more isolated than before. You can take control though, a few simple checks when you first start to speak to someone, and before your emotions take hold, can reveal a lot about the person you’re speaking to and save heartache further down the line.”