Grandmother, 80, left living in a caravan after losing £222,000 in ‘Martin Lewis’ Bitcoin investment scam

An 80-year-old grandmother has been left living in a caravan after being duped into transferring £222,000 to scammers including the full proceeds of her house sale.

In one of Britain’s worst ever scam cases, the woman from Kent clicked on an advert on Facebook for a firm claiming to offer Bitcoin investments backed by Martin Lewis.

She began by sending the criminals a few thousand pounds and was encouraged by documents and screenshots they sent back, showing her money was tripling.

The woman then increased the amounts to tens of thousands of pounds at a time as the scammers promised her investment was continuing to give a great return.

However she began to suspect she had been scammed after sending the full value of her £134,000 house sale from her existing accounts with Metro and NatWest.

The criminals had also set up a mirroring app on her phone which let them take control of the device and set up new accounts so they could steal her money.

When she told the scammers that she wanted to withdraw her cash, they said she had to pay their ‘fees’ into a Revolut account before they would release her money.

In a panic, she approached NatWest and asked for a £25,000 loan, which the bank approved – but it then blocked her from sending it into the Revolut account.

Instead, she transferred the money from the NatWest account into the Metro account, and then managed to successfully move it into the Revolut account.

But she never received a penny back of the money that she had invested, and has since had to move into a caravan with her partner having lost everything.

Revolut claims it immediately flagged her account as suspicious and there were no outbound losses – adding that several interventions were also made on her partner’s account in an attempt to combat fraud, although this did eventually suffer losses. 

Her son Nick Duffill picked up her case and took on the banks. Two years later he has now managed to claw back £89,000 from Metro but nothing from NatWest or Revolut.

The Metro total includes £67,000 after the ombudsman’s intervention – despite the bank appealing that ruling – and a further £22,000 from Metro as a ‘goodwill gesture’.

Mr Duffill told the Daily Mail: ‘Since it happened my mother’s mental health has just hit rock bottom. It’s affected her and my stepdad.

‘They’re now living in a caravan because they’ve got nothing. Everything they’ve ever lived for has gone.

‘It’s awful watching them in a time of their life when they should be enjoying retirement and doing all the things that grandparents should be doing.

‘They’re on state pension, they have nothing really. It’s just awful to see. My mum’s always been quite a loud, vibrant person. She’s not any more. She’s a shell of her former self really, and it’s really sad to see.’

He said he was particularly angry about a lack of ‘safeguarding’ for his mother – firstly because she was able to send the money into the Revolut account by Metro, after NatWest had blocked the same transaction and failed to put an alert on the account.

Mr Duffill also claimed he was surprised that NatWest would lend his mother £25,000 after her account had run dry after decades with the bank, given that she had no way of paying it back and was on a state pension. 

He added: ‘Why wasn’t an elderly lady looked after? Surely there’s got to be flags, receiving six figures out of the blue, why wasn’t she instructed, helped, looked after?

‘Instead she’s spent her whole life paying off a mortgage, she’s worked her whole life as well. That’s the thing that gets me, is that she worked hard bringing us all up as a single parent with three kids in the house.

‘We all kept the house clean and tidy and learned the hard way of how hard money is to come by. We’ve all moved on now, and now my mum, who should be looked after – we try and do all we can for her obviously.

‘She’s got no independence now, she can’t afford to do anything. It’s a sad fact of life that if your finances run out, there’s not really a lot you can do. But hers shouldn’t have done.’

Since the scam, Mr Duffill has tried to get some of the money back for his mother, and raised a complaint with the Financial Ombudsman Service, which found against Metro but also that his mother failed to do enough due diligence.

His mother was therefore awarded 50 per cent of the £134,000 she initially transferred – so £67,000 – but Metro then launched an appeal against this.

However, the ombudsman ruled earlier this month that Metro should have to pay the £67,000 plus annual interest of 8 per cent on the amount, calculated from the payments date until the settlement date. 

Metro said this amount has now been paid.

The £22,000 ‘goodwill gesture’ from Metro is separate to the ombudsman’s ruling, and relates to a payment made from the Metro account to an account with Zen, a fintech company based in Lithuania. 

Mr Duffill contacted Zen by email asking for the money back, and was told a refund would be processed – but was concerned that the company’s response could itself be fraudulent.

He therefore asked Metro to intervene and speak to Zen directly, and was then told by Metro that the bank would be processing the refund as a ‘goodwill gesture’.

This left him frustrated because he felt Metro were ‘trying to pass off this money as their own’ and ‘offering it to my parents from the goodness of their heart’. 

But Metro disputes this point and insists it was a ‘goodwill gesture’ because the bank made an early decision to refund the money. Metro could not get back the cash from the account where it eventually ended up because it was moved on too fast.

Meanwhile Mr Duffill is also trying to raise a complaint with the ombudsman relating to NatWest, but he is waiting for a ‘final decision’ letter from the bank to confirm it will not award her any money.

He added that he ‘felt sorry’ for Mr Lewis having his name used in scams, saying: ‘It must be so tough having such a good name and trying to do the very best for everybody and then people like these scammers abuse that.’

Mr Duffill also called on Facebook to do more to protect the public from fake adverts.

And he urged anyone with elderly parents to be extra vigilant, saying that people should never fall for the cliché of ‘these things never happen to me’.

A Metro spokeswoman told the Mail: ‘This is a difficult case which shows the ruthlessness and sophistication of scammers today, often with devastating consequences.

‘In this case, the customers transferred funds from their current account to their own accounts held with Revolut.

‘We ask customers to be open and honest when making a payment – it could make all the difference and potentially protect you from fraud. Given the complexity of the case, we asked the financial ombudsman to review and we accept its decision.’

The Mail understands that Mr Duffill’s mother and her partner visited Metro in store and used their app over a three-month period to make a series of payments into Revolut accounts held in their names.

Metro staff asked them to confirm what the payments were for and provided a scam warning – but they cited paying family or friends and homewares as the reason.

The couple are claimed to have not mentioned that they intended to invest in cryptocurrencies, which would have triggered a further scam screening procedure.

NatWest declined to comment to the Mail, which is understood to be because the bank believes the transfer from the NatWest account to Metro was legitimate.

But a Revolut spokeswoman did issue a statement, saying: ‘We are very sorry to hear of any instance where our customers are targeted by ruthless and highly sophisticated criminals.

‘The customer [the woman’s partner] was provided with a number of targeted scam specific warnings and interventions when the transaction was identified as potentially fraudulent, and the transactions frozen for several days.

‘Unfortunately, our warnings were not heeded and the customer provided false information in order to continue with these transactions, which we subsequently processed in line with our legal obligations and our customer’s instructions.

‘We are aware that investment scams pose a real risk to customers, with often life-changing sums of money being stolen.

‘We urge our customers to avoid so-called ‘investment opportunities’ on social media platforms and ensure they undertake extensive due diligence to establish the legitimacy of any opportunities prior to making investment decisions.

‘We also urge our customers to always take stock of our warnings and respond to any interventions truthfully, as they are there to help protect their money.’

The Mail understands the Revolut account from which money was lost – which totalled £133,950 – was opened by the woman’s partner.

Revolut is also understood to have frozen his account for an extended period, throughout which he confirmed on several occasions that he was in control and aware of the activity on his account. Several targeted interventions were made to ‘break the spell’ of the scammer, but he ultimately then decided to proceed with the transactions. 

Facebook owners Meta declined to comment to the Mail, while Mr Lewis was unavailable for comment.

However, last month Mr Lewis wrote on Facebook: ‘WARNING! A reminder I don’t ever do adverts. I don’t ever endorse “investment schemes”. 

‘If you see any adverts or promotions anywhere for “innovative platforms”, “get rich quick” “revealed investment secrets” then… THESE ARE CRIMINAL SCAMS ILLEGALLY USING MY NAME & FACE. YOU’LL LOSE YOUR MONEY!

‘If you’re unsure then to check go to MoneySavingExpert. If I have anything I think is good moneysaving it goes there first. If you can’t find it there, then its almost certainly a scam!’