Aviva fraudulently processed my data without authorisation o

[BankFodder]

A couple of questions:

January 2020 – Resolution letter - please can we see this.
6 February 2020 – brother was transferring vehicles – plural?? Do we understand that there were several vehicles being transferred?

[BankFodder]

But you say that they agreed to cancel a payment in January 2020 and they sent you a resolution letter in respect of this.
I don't understand if they agreed to cancel the payment and then send you a default notice on the back of that agreement.
"Resolution letter" are your words.

[BankFodder]

Also, I understand that Aviva reversed some of your brothers chargebacks at first.

Later on they refuse to reverse any further chargebacks because they said that it was his money and not rightfully yours. Is this correct?

It's all in the documentation somewhere – but please could you very briefly list out the chargebacks which were reversed – general dates and amounts.

The chargebacks that they refuse to reverse because they were not rightfully yours – the date that they said this.

[BankFodder]

It's getting complicated – but I think you should send an SAR to the DVLA.
You need to get all information they hold about you in respect of any vehicle – any time.

Don't expect this to be easy. DVLA don't like making these disclosures at the best of times and they are relying heavily on the Covid crisis at the moment.

Despite this, send the SAR this weekend.

I suppose it's about time you understood exactly what your identity has been used in respect of.

You said that the police have been involved. Are they still investigating? Has there been any prosecution? What has happened on this?

[BankFodder]

I see that you suggested to the FOS that you hadn't received most of the correspondence that Aviva sent you – and that this might be because it had been sent by means of their portal.

Has it been confirmed that this correspondence was sent through the portal?

[BankFodder]

Okay have you done SARs to all the relevant people?

Also, in case I haven't suggested it already – because I'm losing track a bit – you need to make a list of all of the insurance accounts loans, – anything else that's been taken out in your name. Credit records et cetera. Because I think you are going to have to make a serious complaint to the police with a view to having it prosecuted.

If they are prepared to carry out their own investigation and to bring a prosecution then everything should finally come out into the light and you will have a full understanding of what has happened and also you will be protected in the future.

I still try to get my head around it but it certainly seems to me that all the warning signs of domestic abuse were in place and therefore Aviva acted inappropriately by allowing your brother to take control in the way that they did and to allow accounts to be set up in your name.
Also, there was clear evidence that he was setting up the insurance simply as a front – to front him as the main driver on the back of the insurance which was taken out in your name.

It's also clear to me that the insurance contract was with you. Although the money was paid by your brother, your brother had no legal relationship with them. He was not contracting partner. The money that was being paid to them by a brother was effectively a gift to you and therefore they were wrong to allow the chargeback – and wrong to say that the money was not "rightly yours". Although of course the bank account was not your name and they couldn't have been a chargeback to you, they were wrong to have allowed the chargeback to 1/3 party who was not involved in the insurance contract.

I think we may simply have to wait until the SARs have been disclosed – but in the meantime we will have to respond to the ombudsman when you decline your decision and make a number of points which will go on file.

I'm trying to think what I've asked you to do so far:
certainly, to send some SARs.
To put together a list of all activity which has been started using your name and which effectively is a result of identity fraud by your brother
I also think that you should write to Aviva and asked them if they have a policy relating to domestic abuse – and if so please can you have a copy. They will decline to let you have it even if they admit that they do have policy – but at least we will have it on paper that they don't make it available to people. Of course it is absurd not to publish domestic abuse policies because they form part of their "process" which I do not accept has been followed by Aviva.
Their "process" are a set of rules which govern the way that they deal with your business. In other words those rules applied to the conduct of your contract and its absurd to say that you are bound by a contract that we won't tell you what all the rules of that contract are.

It's still incredibly complicated and I'm having difficulty finding my way through – but I do think that Aviva have acted incorrectly by allowing the policy to be formed in the first place.
Also, I hope you won't mind me saying that I know that you are from a background where culturally there is likely to be a high level of extended family involvement and pressure.
It is clear to me that if there is a domestic abuse policy in place with Aviva – and they do claim all to be trained – that that abuse policy should include being alert to naming conventions in relation to ethnicity and culture and they should be aware that some names should set off warning bells that taken with other clues such as different names, different addresses, apparent different marital status of two people even though the man claims that they are married, plus a reluctance to allow the call handler to speak to the main policyholder with which the contract is being formed – all of these should raise in any prudent person – properly trained and aware – reasonable suspicion that extra enquiries should be made.
In fact the call handler in this case was actually worried about it and went to get permission from the manager.
Clearly there were reasonable grounds for suspicion. Clearly the call handler entertained a reasonable suspicion and it is the manager who made a mistake either through carelessness, laziness, or inadequate training.

If that manager had not ignored all the warning signs, then none of this would have happened.

Of course the other people who have decided to ignore all the warning signs are – The Financial Ombudsman Service – the adjudicator and the ombudsman. This speaks volumes to the second-rate slap-hazard limp-wristed approach that we get from a statutory regulator.
It would be interesting also to know if the FOS has domestic abuse policies in place.

Have I suggested to you that you make an FOIA request to the FOS?

[BankFodder]

You won't be making a complaint to the FOS. There's no purpose. The decision is made and there is no appeal. You simply be making a list of points that they should have picked up on and that they have missed or ignored.

However, I think you should send the FOS an FOIA request.

Asked them to disclose to you any policies that they have relating to domestic or economic abuse financial abuse, notes or minutes of any discussions they have had internally and any notes or discussions that they have had with any external body or organisation on the subject of domestic or financial or economic abuse.

Send that letter off to them on Monday. They have 20 days to respond.

Make sure the letter is headed "Freedom of Information Request".

 

Post the letter appear before you send it.

Please also post up a draft of the letter that you will be sending to Aviva on Monday on broadly the same subject
 

[BankFodder]

You have time to do that.

At the moment, please concentrate on selling the SARs, the FOIA request, gathering together a list of every instance that you can discover concerning identity fraud against you.

 

[BankFodder]

I think it's worth outlining what is happening here.

There are two issues. There is a connection between them but I think they can be distinguished.

First of all there is the Aviva issue.
I think in respect of this, will be necessary first of all to show that there were very clear indicators of abuse being perpetuated and that they should have followed the instincts of the call handler and insisted on speaking to you all else refusing to issue the policy.
Part of this also is that they should have challenged the chargebacks and they should have recognised that their contract was with you and that although the payments were being made directly by a brother, in fact the payments were from you and that if your brother wanted his money back then he should have dealt with you.
I'm not too sure on what basis he demanded the chargebacks. Is there any clue? Of course this would be between him and his bank and so you would not be privy to this. However, maybe the subject access request will produce something.
Also – the clear evidence that this policy was being purchased in order to enable fronting. On this basis, the insurance company should have written to you and raised the issue and this would have been a basis for revoking the insurance – but not for returning the money.

 

The second issue is the general problem that you have with your brother about identity theft, his fraudulent use of your details, issue of forged documents incurring debts in your name and so forth.
This requires police action. I've read some of the documents that you have posted again and in fact I now realise that this is the subject of a live investigation and that you are expecting a visit from the police on the 28th of this month.
In addition to answering their questions and giving them as much detail as possible about all the fraudulent activity, I think it will be helpful to you to repeatedly draw their attention to the Aviva problem, the fronting, the attempt by him to defraud Aviva of their money by instigating multiple chargebacks in respect of a insurance contract in which you were the contracting party and in which he had no position.

It will be very helpful if you can get the police to deal with this specifically and to agree with you.
I think also when you are dealing with the police I think you need to emphasise that in fact although this is not domestic abuse in the conventional sense – because it is with your brother/extended family, you have still come under similar pressures and it must be treated as an example of domestic abuse.

If the police are prepared to accept this, you will find that it will motivate them even more because domestic abuse is a pretty dirty word today and everybody is concerned about awareness of it.

I would expect that the police training relating to domestic abuse will tend to exclude the possibility of domestic abuse carried out by extended families – and in this case your brother, but you must emphasise it and re-emphasise it.
Point out to them that it was not so long ago that Theresa May wrote an article in the press in which she herself pointed out that domestic abuse is not limited to the immediate family but also can come about as a result of abuse from an extended family.

Quote

Because the truth is that some people who are suffering do not know it is domestic abuse — and that help is out there for them.

Domestic abuse is not just physical violence in a marriage. The perpet­rat­or could be a current or ex-partner, a co-­parent, or a relative.

The abuse could be sexual or non-sexual.

 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12069662/theresa-may-boris-johnson-end-domestic-abuse-crisis/

 

Print out a copy of this article and show it to the police. Show it to anyone else who thinks that abuse is simply limited within the immediate family.

 

I think the second issue – of the identity fraud and the multiple attempts to borrow money or get insurance policies et cetera in your name – will have to be resolved by the police and you need a successful prosecution – which I think should be fairly straightforward.
I expect that you will come under a lot of pressure from your brother and also may be extended family not to pursue proceedings.
Frankly you won't be helping yourself if you give in to this pressure and you probably had better get ready for a tough time.

I can imagine that for the police to get themselves together and bring a prosecution will take a long time and you could be looking at more than a year that even two years.

In terms of the Aviva situation, I think we need to try and put our evidence together and if at some point we feel that we have enough evidence to show that their training and policies should have been enough to cause them to refuse the policy. Then we have a basis for saying that they didn't follow their own process. Or else that their process was unfair.

What this next leads to is difficult to say. I suppose there is a remote possibility that Aviva might want to revisit the situation and undo all the damage they have done without admitting any liability.
The second possibility might be to bring an action against them for unfair treatment contrary to the FCA ICOBS rules.

Don't hold your breath. We may not be able to do anything but we will look at the situation very carefully. Don't expect it to be quick.

However start keeping detailed notes of everything that happens in the future, any contact from your brother et cetera. And of course assemble all the paperwork.





 

[BankFodder]

Aviva is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. You could only send them on SAR to get personal data relating to you.

Of course what we'd really like to see would be any policies they have relating to domestic abuse – and also their training. However, they won't want to disclose it – but we may as well ask nicely.

Maybe you could post the draft of the letter you are proposing to send up here and we can have a look.

On the other hand, the FOS is subject to the Freedom of Information Act although they may try and find their own reasons why they feel that the information you want this excluded by the Act.

[BankFodder]

Perfect

[BankFodder]

Please will you post up the enquiry that you sent which produced this response.

I'm going to say now that I'm afraid that the problem you have is too messy and too low value to interest any firm of solicitors. Even if you did find a firm of solicitors which was prepared to take it on, it is unlikely that they would be specialised enough and activist enough to be able to understand the issues and the way forward.
I'm afraid that you will need from people who have a killer instinct and you are prepared to kick arse if they can.
That tends to be us I'm afraid. We get personally invested. Also, you will have what it takes to push this through if you really want to – and that is you have self interest and – Grudge – and without these two highly motivating factors, it will simply be a slow process which will eventually fatigue you until you give up.
Any firm of solicitors will not have these motivating factors.

I'm afraid this really is about doing it yourself with our help and we will stay with it as long as we can – but it won't be easy.

The objective here is to try and get sufficient evidence that when they set up the insurance, they ignored the signs of abuse which in fact should have set alarm bells ringing.

If we are able to demonstrate that they had policies in place – or they should have had policies in place which any reasonably aware and trained company would have had an yet they ignored the signs, then I think you have a basis for challenging them on unfair treatment.

As I said, this really won't be very easy and I think that we will have to contact various abuse organisations and but some of the basic facts to them and asked them whether they think that those signs ring alarm bells.

When we do that, I don't think we should discuss anything about the future contact of the case – the allegations that you are then sent correspondence et cetera et cetera et cetera. We are only interested in that first phone call – the one which was used to set up the insurance.

The ombudsman was wrong, in my view to look at all the subsequent events. The only thing which had been queried and the only thing which is significant is whether the policy should have been set up in the first place. If the answer is that it should not have been, then everything else falls.

I'm trying to have some contact with some abuse agencies to run the facts past them – and if you are going to do the same thing then we need to agree exactly what you're going to disclose to them. You should not complicate the issue or cast any doubts on their mind by talking about the later conduct of the insurance and the correspondence et cetera.

Any contact and any description of events must be strictly limited to the description of that telephone call which they had with your brother. It has been very well described by the ombudsman and we will use that as the basis.

However, I think it will be wise to wait for the SARs and also the Freedom of information act request because that may provide us with more information to go on.

[BankFodder]

You are quite right – and maybe I didn't express myself clearly.

The starting position is that there is no contract between the brother and Aviva – and in fact that Aviva intended to contract with the system.
After that, all Aviva stealing should have been with the sister and they should have taken any instructions from the sister and not from the brother.
Then of course we go onto the fact that if they finally accept that they contracted with the sister – then of course the final position is that the contract was invalid.

It was effectively achieved by a fraud by the brother.

I completely agree, that this point was never considered by the FOS.

Aviva should have been on enquiry because all of the indicators of an abusive man – apparently the husband – were clear for anybody who was apparently trained and subject to abuse policies and therefore Aviva should never have entered into the contract.

In summary, there was no contract with the brother. If there was a valid contract then it would be with the sister and she was the only one entitled to give instructions – but in the final event, there was no valid contract with her either.

Aviva are victims of fraud

[BankFodder]

I'm afraid there anybody you go to about this will fob you off. It's a bit too complicated and too messy for most people's taste.

You really need serious police involvement – as your brother has committed an offence under the fraud act 2006 – probably section 2.

If there could be a crime reference number and an arrest – and even a prosecution – a successful prosecution – then that would be enormously helpful.

I'm afraid that this will be down to you to contact the police. Of course Aviva should do it – but they won't. You will have to bring pressure to bear on the police and your list of fraudulent accesses to your credit file and attempts to get insurance and loans et cetera will all count as very good evidence.

You need to make sure that this is fully documented as possible – and of course keep copies for your own file as well as giving it to the police.

After that, as I said, we need to try and get some abuse organisations to comment on the setting up of the contract.

For this, and we will have to agree a set of facts to present to them and we should put something together really when we have got more information from the SAR and the FOIA request. In the meantime, you could certainly start pressing the police and alleging fraud under the fraud act 2006.
If any police try to say that this is a civil matter – then tell them that they are wrong. Tell them that it is clearly contrary to section 2 of the fraud act – but then come back here and let us know.

Please don't hold your hopes up too high. This will be hard work, it will take a long time – and there's I see no guarantee that it will be successful. You again have to make most of the running yourself. All we can do is get some enthusiastic support and feed you ideas

[BankFodder]

I quite agree that it is Aviva which is the victim of fraud here. But like all of these companies – mobile phone companies whose customers have their phone stolen abroad or their Sim cards cloned and then decide to treat their customers as the people in debt rather than themselves as the victim. Just like the banks whose customers have their cash cards stolen or cloned, the banks prefer to treat their customers as in debt and refuse to consider themselves as victims.

I quite agree that Aviva are victims – that they find that the easiest route is simply to call the money back from the person they consider to be their customer –

[BankFodder]

I completely agree.

The trouble is that when these organisations make these decisions – the bank, Aviva, the FOS – they entrench themselves and despite glaring evidence, they prefer to close ranks and to protect themselves.

It's corrupt and generally speaking there is very little that ordinary people can do about it. But if we are steady and methodical and try to gather together the necessary information, we may well find that we can put a case together eventually to challenge Aviva for their unfair treatment of you.

An investigation – and eventually a charging of your brother for fraud will help enormously.

[BankFodder]

You don't need to respond to this – as long as you meet the deadline for declining the decision. However, it's up to you – and I don't suppose it will do any harm simply to say that you have acknowledged and you are considering the situation.

 

[BankFodder]

I am assuming that you've already sent them the freedom of information request – yes?

However I've had another thought and I think it might be useful to acknowledge their message and say to them that you have received their decision and you are considering the situation but to help you consider the situation you would like them to provide you with details of any domestic or economic or financial abuse policies which they have implemented and also to know about their interaction with any abuse organisations.

Unfortunately the FOI deadline is after the deadline for accepting or declining their decision. It would be nice to have the policy in advance – and so may be a nice little note and asking for this information might produce something.
I doubt it – but you may as well try and it will be interesting to have something on file which has remained unanswered.

Do this even if you have sent the FOIA request.

Have you sent the FOIA request?

[BankFodder]

Well it's good of them to take the trouble to put this together for you. I think all of the advice is something that we understand completely and doesn't contribute at all.

Their last paragraph is useful if you haven't already contacted your bank or CIFAS. I don't think we suggested that step and maybe we should have done.

Other than that, I recommend waiting until we get FOIA disclosures and SAR disclosures – although we will provide a list of points for the FOS to put on file – but as citizens advice of said – and is we have already said, you won't actually be able to object or change the FOS decision

[BankFodder]

I quite agree about contacting the abuse sites – but I think we need to get more information. Considering how long it's all gone on, I don't think there's a huge hurry and we need to be slow and steady and methodical about gathering information.

I suggest that once we get more information – FOIA and SAR, we will understand more and we can then put together a letter to the various abuse organisations and simply asked them whether the kind of scenario where are describing would ring bells to somebody who should be aware of controlling behaviour by family member.

That's just be cautious.

If you the fact that you are CIFAS registered et cetera – I don't think that the citizens advice letter adds anything at all useful.

 

[BankFodder]

52 minutes ago, cjcregg said:

 

Just seen this but I think this will almost certainly be exempted under section 12 .

 

I don't know why that that FOIA request passed me by – and I agree, it's absolutely too broad.

I hope it hasn't been sent.

I don't understand all the questions about productivity et cetera are.

[BankFodder]

Well as I've already indicated, I agree with @cjcregg that it was asking far too much.

Also I think it was a mix and match of issues and that was unhelpful as well.

I now see where you post up the draft and as I say, I missed it because when I told you that a proposed letter was – perfect – I was referring to the one immediately above my post. I hadn't noticed your proposed FOIA request.

There will have to see what it returns and we may have to make a another one – although we then give them grounds for refusing on the basis that it is repetitive.

We'll see.

It's very important not to mix issues in these kinds of requests. Apart from anything else it can create confusion with the organisation that you are seeking information from. Also, these organisations do not like to provide information because they don't know what can of worms is being opened if that information is provided.

Let's see what happens.

If we have to do another one then maybe we can ask @cjcregg for some help in drafting it and some guidance on the matter.

[BankFodder]

I think you should wait and see what the response to the one you've already sent.
You never know, they might produce some useful information and of course maybe we are wrong that the request will be declined.

[BankFodder]

Well I hope that your meeting with the police goes well. You need to keep on emphasising the domestic/economic abuse aspect. This is a kind of trigger phrase for them. Also of course keep on referring to fraud.

I suggest that it would be very useful if you took notes while the meeting was happening.

Although it seems strange, they won't give you access to anything that they prepare as a result of your meeting – so you should take brief notes and then write them up when the police have done so you can remember exactly how the discussion went

[BankFodder]

Also, – in order to avoid getting into a discussion about it, I suggest that you don't mention the fact that you are visiting this forum for advice. They don't like this kind of thing. They don't really know why they don't like it – but they don't like it and to avoid disapproval, I suggest that you don't mention it. It's not relevant anyway.

But of course it's a decision that you make for yourself