So I see in todays Herald, yet another article about an unfortunate victim of overseas scammers, fleecing some $200k (after $100+ was recovered) and the victim is trying to lay blame on the banks. Here, it seems the bank followed reasonable steps to ensure the authenticity of the transaction, even phoning the victim to double check the details before authorizing the offshore transaction. Whilst its a sad day that someone loses their life savings, in this case (from the info within the article), it looks like the bank was as much in the dark about the fraud as the victim was and had no reasonable alerts / highlights to think otherwise.

The nature of the fraud seems very familiar, investment returns that looked inviting, well researched fraudster who gained the trust of the victim etc etc etc. The victim quite rightfully feels hard done by having lost about $200k, but my question is, how much of the responsibility should the banks wear?

Banks are custodians of our money, but ultimately they are there to act on our instructions. If you make a bill payment to the wrong payee using internet banking or similar, there is no intermediary, no magical know it all system that knows you goofed and its up to you try and correct your error by getting the money back. Particularly in the case of transfers to a NZ bank account, the opportunity for a bank to step in and stop the transaction must be almost nil. If its going offshore, there may be a bit more time, but still only hours I would have thought.

Is this a case of the victim trying to garner public support to put community pressure on the bank?

Some will say that they make enough profit already and should see the victim right, but, why should they if they haven't done anything wrong? If they do just pay back all victims of fraud, ultimately its all the banks customer's that will end up paying through higher interest rates and/or higher fees.