A London Hedge Fund Lost $1.2 Million in a Friday Afternoon Phone Scam

[marmar]

No honor among thieves.


The finance chief at Fortelus Capital Management LLP got an alarming phone call just as he was getting ready to leave work on a Friday.

The caller said he was from Coutts, the London-based hedge fund’s bank, and warned there may have been fraudulent activity on the account. Fortelus Chief Financial Officer Thomas Meston was reluctant, but agreed to use the bank’s smart card security system to generate codes for the caller to cancel 15 suspicious payments. He hung up just after 6 p.m., according to court filings.

When Meston logged on to the firm’s online bank account the following Monday, he saw that 742,668 pounds ($1.2 million) was gone. Coutts, a unit of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, had no record of the Friday phone call. Meston had been conned.

Meston was terminated by Fortelus and is now being sued by the fund, which says he breached his duty to protect its assets. Details of the phone conversation, which took place in December 2013, were described in documents from the firm’s London lawsuit. Meston denies he was negligent and says he acted honestly, according to his court documents in the case. ............(more)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-07/friday-afternoon-scam-cost-hedge-fund-1-2-million-and-cfo-s-job

[Snobblevitch]

1. That CFO is a moron.

NEVER give out ANY information to a stranger who calls you, unless you don't care who gets that information.