Good Day

I wonder if you can help me?

Long story short, I used a furniture removal company to move my furniture but they let me down and cannot deliver the service. I asked for a refund and they asked me for my banking details, I then emailed them my banking detials but somehow one of our (myself or furniture removals company) emails account got hacked and they changed the banking detials. They then mayde the refund too the hackers fnb account. 

I notified them and opened a case at my bank (FNB) and they opened a case at Nedbank from where they made the payment. 

Fnb then notified me that the sender needs to open a case at SAPS with all of the detials, I informed the sender to do soo but they said they will not open a case and will not help me. 

What can I do? 

Kind Regards 

Johann Pistorius

Hi there and thank you for your question,

I am a practicing attorney based in South Africa and I will assist you with your question. Please feel free to ask as many follow up questions in order to clarify your question. If you have a new question, you must please open a new thread.

Please keep in mind that our discussions is for general information purposes only. Our engagement on this website does not create an attorney-client relationship. 

Do you mind if I take a moment to review your question? I will come back to you shortly!

Att. Patrick

So, if the furniture removal company asked you for your bank account details, and you then sent the details to them, and they then made the payment into the hacker's bank account, I would GUESS that after you sent them your email, the hackers somehow deleted your email from the furniture removal company inbox, and then the hackers sent the furniture removal company their own email using the hacker's bank account details. 

So, the furniture removal company made the payment into the wrong back account details, because they never checked the details with you over the telephone before they made the payment.

In this instance, the furniture removal company is at fault because according to you, they never made the payment into your bank account. 

The furniture removal company still owes you the refund. 

This has happened many, many times before (usually it is a firm of attorneys who is hacked) and our courts have upheld the above principle, that the payer (the furniture removal company) is obliged to ensure that they make the payment into the correct bank account. 

We have procedures in place where we need to telephone to verify ALL bank account details that we receive via email. 

If the furniture removal company won't make the payment to you, then what you need to do is to issue a summons out of the small claims court and sue them for it. You have a good case, and you can do this without a lawyer. 

If there is a part of the answer which you need more advice on, or clarity please continue in this same thread instead of opening a new question. 

Att. Patrick 

Please remember this is a dialog if you have follow-up questions please use the REPLY button and ask. If I did not answer the question you thought you were asking, please respond with the specific question you wanted to be answered. I hope you found my answer helpful, and you have finished asking your questions, please click on the GREEN ACCEPT button in order to mark the question as closed.

I think that your stance on the whole issue is:- they owe you a refund; you gave them your bank account details; you've not received the refund; you think that they were hacked; they made a payment to a hacker, thinking that it was you; that's not your fault; you want your refund; they need to deal with getting their money back from the hacker.

If you get involved in the middle of this, you will stand to lose. It's not your money that the hacker "stole", they made a payment into the wrong account. They were caught up by the fraud ... not you. 

You were not caught up by anyone. 

FNB is correct ... the SENDER needs to open up the case at SAPS because they made the payment. You never did anything.