A 25-year-old woman was left with a £6,000 loan and a damaged credit score after falling victim to a sophisticated Monzo impersonation scam.
Kelle Cowell, from Ashford, Kent, received a call in March 2024 from someone claiming to be a Monzo representative. The caller warned her that a fraudster had accessed her account and urged her to transfer her money for safekeeping.
Ms Cowell, who works for a timber building company and runs a home-based body piercing business, transferred around £580 to what she believed was a secure account.
The scammer then informed her that the supposed hacker had attempted to take out a loan in her name. She was advised to initiate a loan application herself, ostensibly to cancel the fraudulent request.
Then, a lump sum of £6,000 dropped into her account.
Panicked and realising she had fallen victim to a scam, Ms Cowell informed Monzo immediately but the damage was done.
She said Monzo told her the case would be handed over to the bank’s fraud department and investigated.
However, two weeks passed and she was getting “worried” as the £6,000 loan was still sitting in her account.
Ms Cowell said she sought external advice from ActionFraud, the National Debtline, and the Financial Ombudsman Service.
“I was advised not to pay the loan back at all because once I pay for it, I’m liable for it,” she said.
Eventually, Monzo found that she was liable for the loan and asked her to make repayments, she said.
“It was £150 a month and there was interest on the loan – I felt helpless.”
As Ms Cowell had technically missed repayments, she said her credit score plummeted from 995 to 637 – which was “really stressful”.
“Everyone falls for a scam at some point and you expect it to be dealt with quite quickly, that just was not the case for what happened here,” she said.
“I felt let down, alone and scared as I was going up against a big corporation.”
On May 27, however, Monzo was able to rectify the issue and Ms Cowell said she could return the money, the loan was closed and her credit file was updated.
She said she also received £890 from Monzo in total – which included the money she had been scammed out of, refunds in interest on the loan and a small fee of compensation.
“I’m glad things were resolved and I didn’t expect to get any money back,” she said.
“The scariest part of the scam is that they knew were I lived, they knew everything in my account – you feel vulnerable.”
A spokesperson for Monzo said: “We’re sorry our customer fell victim to impersonation fraud in March last year.
“Luckily they used our Call Status tool to identify that they were not on the phone to Monzo, preventing them from losing a larger amount to the scam.
“At the time we cancelled the loan they were tricked into applying for, paid back the interest and prevented any impact to their credit score.
“We recognise we should have resolved this quicker, and we apologise for any additional stress caused because of this.”
