Banco Santander has recently been sentenced to return 18,500 euros stolen from one of its clients by a scammer from Lithuania through the ‘phishing’ method. In addition, the sentence obliges the bank to bear the costs of the legal process initiated by the law firm Sello Legal.
Íñigo Serrano, partner of Sello Legal, points out that the sentence is important because for the first time the responsibility of the banking entity is taken into account, condemning the bank instead of the foreign swindler, according to Europa Press.
Phishing is a widespread fraud method, which seeks to extract money from a bank account, credit card or any banking product through deception. In this case, the Sello Legal client received a communication through a text message from someone who pretended to be their bank.
Said SMS alerted him to a serious security problem that he had to solve by accessing a link. When he clicked, he found a web page similar to that of Banco Santander, where the swindled person put his bank passwords and verified that his account was in order.
The next day the bank client found two entries in his movements. In total, 18,500 euros had been stolen from him from Lithuania. The phisher had taken advantage of the information obtained fraudulently to steal large amounts of money through two bank operations.
A lawsuit based on the Payment Services Law in order to recover his money, the bank’s client contacted the entity, obtaining a long response. For this reason, the lawsuit was filed, which has now been resolved. His team of lawyers, specialized in ‘phishing’ and scams through the Internet, designed a lawsuit based on the Payment Services Law.
This Law establishes that if there is a theft of funds through a payment order that has not been duly authorized, the bank is responsible for carrying out the refund of the money. However, if the bank is able to prove that there is gross negligence on the part of its client, it would not be obliged to replace the capital. Obviously this did not happen. The communication of the sentence was clear. The responsibility of the banking entity has been recognized and this opens a clear legal path to limit digital fraud.
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