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Comment by jmondi | Hacker News Reader

I was scammed $350 from one of the Zelle scammers. I know, I know, I was stupid for falling for it. My experience went like this:

Just moved into new house, had the cable guy over setting up internet. I get a phone call from "The Electric Company" (they used the real name) saying that I just moved in and I didnt put down a deposit, blah blah, I need to pay $350 now or the power will go off. I needed internet for work the next day, and wifey factors.... I panicked and sent the money. I know, it was stupid, but there was a lot of shit going on, and I just fell for it.

Literally IMMEDIATELY after I pressed the "send money" button, it dawned on me, I realized what I did, I hung up the phone and IMMEDIATELY called my bank asking them to reverse the payment. They would not do ANYTHING. They were completely useless, the person got my money and I had no way to stop it.

A month later, I'm getting trees trimmed, and the company wants payment in Zelle. Begrudgingly I oblige, and send my payment to them over Zelle. It took over 48 hours for the money to be delivered to them. The tree company kept asking me what the heck was taking so long, I had to call my bank several times to see why the money wouldnt send. It was stuck in "pending" for almost 48 hours, and the Tree guys wouldnt do the work until it cleared.

Moral of my ramble: fuck scammers, and fuck Zelle.

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The reality is that everyone alive is susceptible to these scams. No human is impervious to being victimized by these groups. They will pay good money for information to target people. Originally, some scammers would aim for early morning hours just as people are waking up, their brains are still groggy and vastly more susceptible to making an error. However, now that so much public information is available you can easily craft scams that are indistinguishable from reality. Scammers leverage this along with a common theme of "urgency" to minimize the time period that someone has to realize they are being taken for a ride.

Understanding this, banks have crafted Zelle to pass the responsibility down to the customer. It was a very smart move (from the financial industry's perspective).

I don’t care about Zelle one way or the other but maybe after you complained to them trying to get the first payment reversed they put some kind of a “wait 48 hours flag” on your account for future payments? Also sorry that happened to you, fuck scammers. Don’t blame yourself too hard.

Banks often have policies that have the effect of penalizing reporting fraud and other issues.

Right before a trip I wanted to withdraw $60 in cash. I went to one atm, but it showed an error and didn't dispense the cash. So I went to another. Later in the day I saw the first ATM had withdrawn from my account despite the errror.

I called and was told if I wanted to ask for the transaction to be reversed they would cancel my card and mail me a new one. Of course, that meant I wouldn't have the card on my trip.

I ended up eating the $60. Suppose I could have tried disputing further.

That's shit. My bank accused me of defrauding them when I told them the person who stole my credit card bought stuff on an invoice that showed the stuff shipped the day before they even bought it.... to a guy called "pirateargggggh3890[roughly]@hotmail.com" from a now flagged known ebay seller/fraudster. The products were a mix of religious and feminine materials ... I am an atheist man in a state far away from the one purchased.

I phoned in for an appeal and I was laughed at by the bank employees over the phone, and told I was mistaken and my family members must be the thieves. Claim denied.

Always record these calls. Screw what the state law says about this.

> I was scammed $350 from one of the Zelle scammers. I know, I know, I was stupid for falling for it.

No, you were trained to fall for it by companies behaving a lot like scammers most of the time.

No, he fell for a scam because he was ignorant of how things work. That ignorance is exactly what scammers count on.

There is no good way to authenticate legit vs scam many times. No amount of being clever will put in place a protocol that doesn't exist.

In the case of utility companies you can always just pick up the phone and call their main customer service number to verify your account status and balance. Text messages and emails should always be treated with suspicion, but intercepting outgoing phone calls is outside the capability of regular scammers.

I've received multiple phone calls from my bank to discuss my mortgage

Every time they call me and ask to "go through verification" - aka I give a random stranger on the phone the personal information they need to identify themselves with my bank - so I tell them I'll call them back instead

Then i call back and get bounced around through multiple teams until inevitably the call drops, I think because my mortgage was bought from another bank so it isn't well understood by customer support

Anyway, I think it is legit calls I get from the bank. I hope it isn't important because i still haven't got through to them to talk about it

This is a frustrating reality, but, out of curiosity, did you ever try asking the name and/or department of the person calling you and using that to try to get back to them when calling back?

Every mortgage holder routinely buys loans from other lenders. If you received bad customer service then it probably wasn't due to that specific cause but rather general incompetence and cost cutting.

What utility company is gonna request a payment through Zelle?

Or iTunes Giftcards!

How did the scammers even have the correct information?

They probably bought it from some data broker.

They sell our data to scammers to let them be entirely convincing, and then blame people who fall for it.

The data broker market is ~$250B, it's not all personal data, but the market for personal data to target these scams is huge. The worst part is many data brokers get their data from government sources like the state DMVs: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/dmvs-are-making-a...

No matter how many times I've been late for payments in my life, not ONCE have I ever had a human being call me up and demand payment over the phone. It's always a long series of attempts to collect through the mail.

Let alone calling up and demanding I pay using Zelle...

There is one simple and proven way to authenticate phone scams. You tell them that you will call the company back on the number you already know or have from a bill, or you will pay via the website that you also already know. Until they start commandeering phone numbers or domains you're pretty safe. There is really no reason to answer your phone for numbers you don't know unless you're job hunting or waiting for an important call. I block all numbers not in my contact list. Sure, they can masquerade as a fake number, but even if my caller ID says it's the gas company I'm not going to answer it and if I do I am not giving them any information on that call.

I mean, you're still someone at risk here if someone mails you a nice looking electric bill a few days before with fake info on it, especially in the case the scammer has enough info on you to make it look realistic.

Uh nooo.... You don't call the number that's provided in the format of the outreach - be that a physical piece of mail or an email or an SMS message.

In every case where I've gotten a message / phone call informing me that I need to provide some sensitive information or make a transaction, I determine the organization that they are purportedly representing, navigate to the official website, find the relevant contact info, and call back.

I always assumed everybody did this to prevent these exact types of situations.

Exactly. I have zero concern for my own security when it comes to scams because I know how they work and I hear about all of the latest ones because I am curious about the advances in scamology. I am concerned about my family who are fooled by these things. I'm a cynic by nature so the alerts are firing on communications with uncertified connections. I can't get trusting people to understand that there are people who care primarily about taking advantage of that trust.

It has become increasingly difficult to discern legitimate calls in recent times. Lately, I have been receiving calls from my bank, seemingly related to client relations, originating from a variety of random local numbers. These could potentially be the personal mobile numbers of the bank agents, though I cannot be certain. I usually don't answer these calls as I don't recognize the numbers. The only way for me to verify their legitimacy is through the branch number mentioned at the end of the voicemail messages they leave. However, if I were to actually speak with the caller, it would be challenging for me to determine the call's authenticity.

This is victim-blaming. Companies don't make clear "how things work". I've never once found a web page published by a business that makes clear exactly how they will contact you (e.g. by number xxx-xxx-xxxx for security alerts, from email address foo@company.com for bill payments with a link to company.com/billpay, etc.) so that you can follow that sheet to ensure you're not being defrauded, and that's what's needed.

Perhaps it's time for some regulation - of course, drafted with the extreme care that almost no regulation is written with, but should be...

I like it when they say 'call the number printed on your bank card'. If they publish an outbound number then scammers will spoof it.

Funnily I got some emails and phone calls from Amex some time ago that were extremely phishy (like aexp.com), but they happen to have a website listing the domains they use:

https://www.americanexpress.com/us/security-center/phishing-...

No such thing for the phone numbers though, and since they were just regular landlines not recognised by Google and not available through a Google search, I declined to provide them any information.

There absolutely needs to be regulation for that, like there is the "Mentions Legales" or "Imprint" in France and Germany (a website needs to have a page who they are actually, with an address and everyhing).

Oh, this is really interesting, I didn't know that Amex had a page like this! This is useful, maybe I can point my bank toward it and ask them to make a similar page.

As harvey9 says in a sibling comment, "If they publish an outbound number then scammers will spoof it.", so perhaps publishing a phone number isn't useful - but they should actually state that on their web site, as well as providing a protocol that allows the bank/agency/company/utility to authenticate itself to you.

> "Mentions Legales" or "Imprint" in France and Germany (a website needs to have a page who they are actually, with an address and everyhing).

I like this concept - let's extend it to include an authentication protocol, as above.

> As harvey9 says in a sibling comment, "If they publish an outbound number then scammers will spoof it.", so perhaps publishing a phone number isn't useful

Unless telecom operators are forced to take actions to prevent spoofing.

You and your OP both are right. Companies are totally at fault for muddying waters by using the same methods as scammers (or scammers are smart by using surprisingly similar tactics), and Customer too should be aware of situations.

Zelle, Western Union, Venmo, PayPal (family) literally gives you warnings, multiple prompts, to say that it is irreversible, pay it only to known people, dont use it for government payments, make sure to check registered name, and stuff.

We as customers should know that no utility company, gas, power, internet, government offices, their representatives accept or want payments by Zelle. Zelle is great for person to person, or one time cash-like transactions. If one handover wad of cash to a person claiming a utility representative, one would not expect to get that cash back if he was fraud.

Zelle is irreversible by design (unless receiver sends it back). Otherwise what would stop from people using it like credit card chargebacks?. The only time I have heard zelle txn getting reversed is if reciever asks & insists to his bank that this money is not for me, undo this txn. Although there is a variation of fake check scam reverse zelle too. Just liek check, scammers arrange a zelle incoming from victim 1 to victim 2. Then calls victim 2that it was mistake. Please zelle it back to "me". Victim 2 does zelle. Original txn gets recalled because either victim 1 found it or his bank found it. Victim 2 is out of his good money.

This is especially true of utility companies, who expect you to start paying them money before you ever interact with them or sign any contract, to the point where they will try to destroy your credit score if you don't pay them.

What? I’m ready to believe a lot of things about the USA, but that seems a bit far-fetched?

It's not far from the truth. I don't think they can technically get away with hitting your credit score before you signed a contract, and instead will send you a "first bill" once you do contact them, which will include the difference between the meter reading when you moved into the property, and whatever reading they had from the last tenant. Often this results in a headache while you try to avoid paying for electricity/gas you didn't consume. But it's not unheard of for utility companies to fuck with your credit score when the only major error you made was not contacting them quickly enough.

If you have a history of non-payment they may require a security deposit, but with the exception of cable/internet most residential utility bills are sent (and paid) post-usage.

> If you have a history of non-payment

It happens if you have a history of not being a previous customer with them. I had a notice of good payment history from my previous electric company from another state and the company in the new state still required a deposit.

PGE requires either a ACH autopay or deposit. One time I paid bill by Credit Card to get 3% back, (through Bill Pay to avoid PGE 2% fees for card), PGE asked me deposit because autopay did not execute (because there was no balance).

I have never experienced anything like that on either coasts of the US. The utility company has an obvious looking website that you can use to make an account and pay electronically.

In the US, any business that requests payment outside of credit card/debit card/ACH/checks is questionable.

I have never experienced like that in 4 different movings. I expect to pay since the day I get the keys till days I return keys for home. I setup and account with utility, or gas, or something. They bill me in 10-30 days, I pay again in about 30 days or less.

A few years ago before moving into a new apartment, I needed to purchase renter's insurance per the terms of the lease. After filling out the info online with the company, I got a call a few hours later asking to finalize the details, and right before I was about to give them my payment info, I suddenly realized that giving payment info to someone who called me instead of looking up the number myself and calling them is exactly what we're told not to do, so I apologized and asked if it was all right for me to call them back. The person I was talking to said that was totally fine and gave their name and said I could ask for them, so after hanging up, I got the official number and called it. The person I talked to was able to verify that I was in fact talking to someone legit before, but they refused to transfer me to them and instead insisted on completing the transactions themself (presumably for the commission). From what I can tell, the way the reps for this company were paid incentivizes them to call people directly to try to get the sale for themself and by extension _punishes_ them for allowing the customer to take the safe next step of hanging up to look up the number and call back directly.

This.

I somehow forgot to pay a bill for daycare, and it went to their payment recovery contractor (it went automatically, without nobody telling me anything despite me going there every day). So the company called, said I had missed a bill and I needed to pay then over the phone with my credit card. Obviously they went mad when I told them I won't pay this way without receiving any king of paper by the mail or something to at least give me the slightest confidence that this wasn't a scam attempt. They ended up mailing me two weeks later, and charged me a fee for late payment…

Seriously, how do you want people not to fall for scammers if legit companies act the same way and charge you for being cautious…

After I bought my new car, I got an email with a header image that looked like it had been scanned from a physical piece of paper, badly. It referenced my name and the bank I had a loan from, but all the domains in the email were not my bank. It claimed I hadn't sent in proof of insurance. I did that at the dealership on the day I bought the car.

I ignored it.

I got it again and ignored it.

On the third attempt, I finally called my bank. It actually was from them, and they really did somehow not have my proof of insurance, and really were going to cancel my loan.

I tried to explain to them what was wrong with the email, but they couldn't understand.

Edit: In the end, I physically went to the bank to handle it. I didn't do anything else remotely with them.

:: cough :: You've been preselected for a great deal on solar for your home! :: cough ::

(every time, me: "Have you bothered to look at the google maps for my home before you called?" Them: "No, let me check... Ohhhh" me: "Yeahhhh... I can't get rid of the trees because they are rooted in the neighbor's property. Not that it wouldn't be quite ironic to remove decades-old trees just to install solar on a roof.")

Thanks for this. Today, I had to open an account to send money to a friend. I was torn between Zelle and Venmo. Per my son's recommendation I went with Venmo. Not sure how many folks get screwed by Zelle, but your post made me feel a little better about going with Venmo. Although, I am sure Venmo has its fair share of shady characters...

FYI Zelle is the banks' clone of Venmo. They both have identical policies here: they don't reverse transactions.

Edit: Yardie is correct, this is assuming your counterparty doesn't pay the business fee. So this'll protect you from legitimate businesses, but a scammer isn't going to pay the extra fee to enable reversibility.

I've never needed to but Venmo definitely reverses transactions. But you have to declare it as a business transaction. A lot of businesses don't want to do that because they have to pay a fee. I pay my barber through Venmo and always record it as a service, since I prepay. I pay my tutor as a family transaction. She gets paid after our sessions.

Speaking from experience, Venmo claims to reverse transactions, but will do everything in their power to NOT reverse your transaction, even if you mark it as business payment.

I paid an architect for work over Venmo. Work was never done and the architect ghosted me. So I sent all the info to Venmo in a dispute and they told me to pound sand.

Well that sucks. It seems outside of credit cards there are very few consumer protections.

I understand Zelle / irreversible payment situations. But the bank knows who this is, its not an untraceable scam.

Why does it survive?

Because it could just as easily be a scam in the other direction. Get paid for a legitimate service, have the payment reversed. The bank doesn't want to get involved - easier to treat Zelle payments as if you handed over cash.

When you move, a whole bunch of information about your move and the fact that you moved becomes available to local business owners. I'm not sure what process is in place that does this (maybe a mailing-address change card you give your post office?) but it is what happens, in the US at least. Usually you'll get a coupon book for local businesses- the fact that they know you just moved in is due to the same process. Anyway, ostensibly bad actors would likely easily get in on this, and frankly it's a clever move because they know you're frazzled and in a state of being disarmed and they knowing you just moved (and where, which explains knowing the name of your electric company) gives them an air of legitimacy and that's the perfect time to strike. Also $350 is not an entirely unreasonable amount of money to ask for.

When you start a business, same thing: you start getting fake bills from fake government agencies.

I'm sure many people just pay them because the hassle of reliably figuring out what's real and what isn't can easily exceed the amount of the bill.

Yep - 100% agree. I opened a new business back in Nov/Dec 2022, and no less than two weeks did I get multiple, official-looking payment requests for labor law posters. They looked very real with some verbiage about "failure to comply with the law", etc. After I opened the first one, I was very motivated to pay the $89 fee (thinking I missed something when starting the business). However, after reading the letter a few times, I realized it was a scam.

The others went in the trash as soon as they came in...

This is so fucking infuriating. I don't know why the government can't shut these things down. They basically send you an exact copy of the official form you have to fill out with one line in it somewhere that says, "This is not an official government communication. We are not associated with the government in any way." But other than that, it looks identical to the real form. How is anyone supposed to be able to discern that difference? Luckily I've not yet fallen for it, but I have come close several times. Ass hats.

I'm pretty sure the US Postal Service sells as much of your data as possible. Their Informed Delivery service seems to be primarily intended to sell ad space in your emails instead of sending you scans of your paper mail.

The USPS sells change of address information. The only way to avoid it is to file the address change as temporary instead of permanent, or not file at all and forgo USPS mail forwarding from the old address.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/08/how-the-p...

When I move I now file a temporary COA and have the mail forwarded to a PO box. I never forward from one residence to another (too many boilerroom sales calls and scam attempts).

It's not, but when a utility asks for payment via Zelle you might want to think twice or at least check on their website first.

Zelle has all of the downsides of cryptocurrency without any of the upsides

Yep, Zelle is a piece of garbage that's hopefully banned soon. I've refused to take or send payments in Zelle, no refuse.

I'll refuse to do business with anyone who doesn't take a credit card.

Don't blame yourself, I can see making the same mistake myself. Moving is stressful and you were just trying to take care of your family and yourself. Blame the scammers, they are the trash that are taking advantage of the emotional state of movers.

How does the scam work, are they using some person (or their account) as a mule and then forward the money? Or is it just unrealistic that anything gets done about $350 so they don't care if you know who they are?

They are in India or Africa and yep, it's only $350 so no nobody (police, bank, etc.) cares

Even if it’s an amount that someone cares about, these people operate in jurisdictions where they can get away with it.

Sorry about that. Regardless of the amount, the feeling of being scammed must suck.

Zelle is insanely scary. The only reason I use a bank is for protection. If they're going to offer a service and not combat scammers, or protect me, why use it all? Sorry to hear that happened to you, it's even more scary that they knew to target you like that at the exact right time.

I tried to buy a used bike in a new city and the guy wouldn't accept anything except Zelle. I had cash, Venmo, Apple Pay, but nope, this guy was hell-bent on Zelle. When I explained to him that I don't have Zelle and wouldn't create one for a $200 bike, he started to think I was a conspiracy theorist. Zelle has done a great job of creating an image of trust and people equate it to using a credit card without fees.

If someone knocked on your door, claimed they were from The Electric Company, asked you for $350 cash, and you gave it to them, would you say “fuck cash”?

When was the last time you pulled out a stack of $20s and had to wait 48 hours for them to become valid?

Cash doesn't try to rationalize all sorts of slow, obnoxious, and expensive behavior on the basis of fraud protection and then fail to protect from fraud. There's obviously a tradeoff here, the problem is getting stuck with the ass end of both sides. I can't really speak to Zelle, but it's definitely true for ACH and wire transfers.

> Cash doesn't try to rationalize all sorts of slow, obnoxious, and expensive behavior on the basis of fraud protection and then fail to protect from fraud.

Neither does Zelle.

> When was the last time you pulled out a stack of $20s and had to wait 48 hours for them to become valid?

Never, but I have also never had that problem with Zelle in probably hundreds of times using it in over a decade.

But I also have never been given counterfeit money via Zelle, which I have been given via cash.

Both mechanisms of transferring money seem to be working pretty well, and both have drawbacks/benefits.

Like I said, I can't speak to Zelle, but I can absolutely speak to wire and ACH and they both have these problems in spades. When I hear that Zelle has the same problems, I believe. When I hear that it's perfect, I doubt, but "works for me" is not strong evidence even if true.

> in over a decade.

Wasn't Zelle introduced in 2017?

No, it was renamed then maybe. It was around as ClearXchange for a while, and some banks had their own names for it, even though it was all the same thing.

Check the history section here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle_(payment_service)

Interesting, thanks!

Technically not Zelle itself, but my bank would not allow me to pay my landlord through Zelle on the basis of fraud prevention (other people at the same bank as them are fine) or send over $1000 per day (this does sort of protect a little, but it also makes it much less useful).

Zelle is one of those services that sounds good in theory but when you actually try using it you realize that the real life use-cases are very near nil.

"You can send money directly! *"

* If you have a pre-established out-of-band trust relationship and dispute resolution system with the person you're sending it to.

Which basically means you can send money to friends and family and that's about it. But you can also do that with Venmo or CashApp. Any online transaction among strangers that uses Zelle is 100% a scam. Full stop. There's a reason that groups that sell things plaster in giant bold letters to use PayPal G&S.

By far the biggest value-adds of Zelle existing is making it really obvious who the scammers are.

> Which basically means you can send money to friends and family and that's about it.

Exactly, and that is how I have used it for 10+ years.

> But you can also do that with Venmo or CashApp.

I could, but then I have trust an additional party (PayPal or CashApp) with access to my money and accounts. This is another risk with no gain.

Ya know what, fair. That's a more sensitive risk profile than I operate under and Zelle is 3rd party to my bank but if you bank with one of the major national banks I can see that providing some comfort.

Zelle is not exactly 3rd party since it is operated by a company that all the big banks themselves own (and assuming you have an account at one of the big banks):

https://www.earlywarning.com/about

> Introduced the Early Warning brand and became wholly bank-owned.

https://www.investopedia.com/what-is-early-warning-services-...

> Seven major U.S. banks own Early Warning Services: Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, Truist, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo.

It's not actually that sensitive a risk profile -- Paypal has shown itself to be untrustworthy with how it'll just freeze an account that you have a bunch of money in or explicitly suck extra money out of your bank account or with the updated terms of service last year that they "backed down on" only slightly. Paypal also owns Venmo, so I won't touch that one. Not sure about CashApp, but I only see it listed by sketchy people and instagram influencers, so I've never considered it trustworthy to begin with. At least Zelle was part of the services provided by my bank (Chase)? Clearly it's worse than that initial impression in practice, but I'm not sure that it's really worse than Paypal or CashApp?

I can get money in my kids bank accounts within minutes, with no fees, all from my banking app and without giving access to my money to some other shady techbro company. Seems like a pretty great use case and one I use every month.

Zelle is an electronic replacement for checks. It is literally a frontend to ACH (with extra security holes). That's its intended use case.

I'd tell them to take a hike. Don't come to my door asking for hard cash. IDGAF who you are.

I mean; yes. I definitely use "Accept Credit Card" as a gate keeper in many situations because cash only transactions are sketchy.

And similarly, I feel sketcky carrying large amounts of bills on me, for say buying a car - I'll go to the bank and get a bank check over having that much cash on me.

If you had cash, they would rob you for it, but since, it's digital payments and most people don't carry cash, it not economically or practical for fraudsters to steal cash.

Zelle is very clear it's not reversible. Like very very very clear. It's how it works, so the person on the other end has a guaranty you won't just claw the money back after you complete a transaction. Pretty weak to blame them for your mistake.

Ok but why is it not reversible? Is there any good reason? Is it doing Proof of Work?

It is the digital equivalent of cash. That is the whole point. When you buy something with cash, can you just reverse the transaction later? The good reason is what use is a person to person payment system where the person receiving money has no guaranty that they get to keep the money received.

How is it person to person if there's a 3rd party facilitating the transaction? Why should someone be guaranteed to keep the money if they got it fraudulently, with the victim unable to dispute?

This is not different from sending physical goods via mail: a 3d party is involved but you will be laughed out of the post office when you demand to return items you sent. And there is no guarantee too: authorities may retrieve your items, though chances are even lower when you send them overseas.

Even when you pay by check or ACH, it's not always reversible. It depends on the bank and where it was sent and how long ago.

No fan of crypto, but the idea of bank protection is kind of a joke. If you authorize the money transfer, they likely will not help you, nor cover the loss. No better than crypto in this regard. Wire transfers are internet for speed, not safety. Banking will always have inherent risks.

To be fair, Zelle is supposed to be competing with the likes of Venmo, where the irreversibility of the transaction is a feature, not a bug. It's supposed to work like cash, for better or worse.

Of course, in practice it kinda sucks. Zelle requires giving strangers way too much information about you. I won't use it. Much as I dislike PayPal, I use Venmo for this use case.

The only thing Zelle requires you to give is an email address (that you choose to associate with your bank account) or phone number. No different than PayPal.

It is one of its features. The previous method of sending and receiving money involves giving out your bank account number (even if not to strangers, then to PayPal), which means anyone can pull funds from your account using ACH.

It's better than ACH, I agree. But Venmo is not PayPal, just owned by them. Venmo works with usernames, not email addresses. I don't have to give a stranger anything other than that username for them to send me money.

It's the bank consortium trying to compete with Venmo with less technology budget; and fewer controls. It's terrifying that this is the best product the consortium could put out. No wonder VISA/Mastercard exist.

I Zelle my kids money all the time and only needed to know their phone numbers.

This is a fault of your political system, it's not a problem inherent to banks.

In my jurisdiction, banks will regularly refund and make whole people who have lost money to scams. They in theory can refuse if they think the owner of the account was careless, but in general they will refund a lot of scams.

One good consequence of this is that scammers now become the banks problem, so they will do more to help educate and prevent scams.

Rather than being able to wash their hands of scams, they will be proactive in making sure transfers are genuine, etc. Of course this can on occasion be a hassle, but in general it's reassuring that the default is not to allow large transfers to "random" people, and even more re-assuring that in general it's the bank who is on the hook for the money.

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