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A new collective action by Argenta customers who fell victim to phishing is fueling the discussion about the attitude of the Belgian banks to internet fraud.
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About thirty Argenta customers who say they have been robbed by phishers are going to court together to demand that the Antwerp savings bank compensate their damage. Phishers are scammers who steal financial information through deceptive messages.
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The essence
- A group of thirty Argenta customers who fell victim to phishing is suing the Antwerp bank to obtain compensation.
- Argenta does not want to recover the losses because there would be gross negligence, say the victims. They deny that and claim that Argenta made mistakes itself.
- Argenta is not the only bank that is at odds with its customers about phishing. But according to the Argenta collective, this is the first group claim against a bank.
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The duped customers claim that they were robbed together for 600,000 euros. They want to recover that amount from their bank, but they don’t give it at home. According to the robbed customers, Argenta says that it is entirely their fault and that there is gross negligence. According to that reasoning, the customers deliberately transferred their money to the phishers. In that scenario, the bank is not legally liable and should not refund the money.
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Argenta does want to enter into discussions with customers, but on an individual basis. ‘As a licensed credit institution, Argenta is subject to strict confidentiality obligations towards its customers,’ the bank says in a response. Therefore, it can only speak to the customers themselves or to representatives expressly appointed by them.
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The injured customers sue Argenta and demand in court that the bank still compensate their damage. During a symbolic action, they delivered the summons to Argenta’s head office in Antwerp on Thursday afternoon. According to the initiators, this is the first group claim ever against a bank in Belgium.
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In a response, Argenta says it will cooperate fully. The bank says that it was already informed in September about a possible group claim and states that it wanted to discuss it. ‘Argenta asked for a minimum of information, such as the identity of the customers. Unfortunately we didn’t get that information until today.’ The summons that was handed over on Thursday does contain the necessary information to enter into a ‘constructive conversation’, it sounds.
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Spoofing
The customers believe that Argenta also failed to make mistakes and that the bank did not inform them in time about new fraud techniques. ‘We fell for it after we received an email from Argenta stating that we had to replace our digipas’, say Hedwig and Josée, two customers who are going to court together with other victims.
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‘After we clicked through, we got a call from the bank’s phone number. An employee warned us that suspicious transactions had been detected, but that we could still secure our money by transferring it to another account that the bank had ready. In total we lost 25,000 euros. Afterwards we turned out to be one of the first victims of spoofing, in which criminals replace their telephone number with that of the bank. Even our local branch manager had never heard of that practice. How then can it be said that we were deliberately misled?’
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Even our local office manager had never heard of spoofing. How then can it be said that we have been deliberately misled?
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The action by the Argenta customers fuels the discussion about the attitude of the Belgian banks towards internet fraud. Ombudsfin, the ombudsman for financial services, already noted that banks do not always fulfill their obligations to reimburse customers if they become victims of internet fraud.
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attrition
A 2018 law states that banks are liable for money stolen through fraudulent transactions. However, this does not apply if the bank has established gross negligence on the part of the customer. Ombudsfin established last year that some banks make it difficult for customers to prove that there was no gross negligence through their general terms and conditions.
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