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ONLINE FRAUD LAWYER

The emergence and growth of the Internet have maximised the opportunities for online fraud, which requires technological expertise. The online fraud lawyer is a highly specialised professional capacity that combines legal and technological knowledge, enabling an understanding of the complex issues raised in online fraud cases. In cases of online fraud, the online fraud lawyer must also be familiar with banking law in order to identify any liability on the part of the bank and protect the client from abusive practices by financial institutions. Caution: in online fraud, any potential liability of the bank must be examined — for example, whether it notified the receiving bank to recall the transfers at the very moment the fraud was reported. Request from your bank the relevant records and the recorded conversations with its employees.

In such cases, victims usually resort to disputing the transactions and to filing a denunciation before the Cybercrime Prosecution Division, while the bank almost always refuses to be held accountable for any deficiency or fault on its part — either because it requires time to investigate and assess the liability it may bear, or because it is financially unable to fully compensate all of its customers who fall victim to such frauds on a daily basis. What you must do, therefore, is approach a lawyer specialised in cybercrime, who knows how such cases are managed and how to claim compensation from the banks, and avoid acting on your own without proper legal support.

Unfortunately, it appears that the banks — primarily for reasons of short-term profitability (fewer counter transactions, fewer branches, fewer employees), but also in order to transition into and adapt to the digital era — added the option of electronic banking (e-banking) to their traditional services at the start of the second millennium, without taking into account the challenges and risks involved. With the explosion of digital technology, criminals prepared themselves, studied the field, identified the weaknesses of the banking systems and effectively caught the structures of the electronic banking system off guard — structures which, in terms of cybersecurity, have remained at the level they were when launched, namely in 2000. On the other hand, we should not ignore that banking institutions are labyrinthine organisations, with hundreds of procedures characterised by complexity. Consequently, taking and implementing rapid decisions appears a very difficult task. For this reason, we must first and foremost protect ourselves and dispel our digital illiteracy through continuous education. We must take our electronic wallet as seriously as our physical wallet and avoid carrying out actions or using applications, programs and platforms that we do not know thoroughly.

Watch a video describing the most common cybercrimes:

The principal forms of online fraud are the following:

1. Phishing – Online Fraud

Unravelling the maze of online fraud, the online fraud lawyer places great emphasis on the attention and vigilance that citizens must show in order to avoid falling victim to electronic “fishing” — the well-known phishing — through deceptive email messages or SMS. Unfortunately, the link in question leads to a fake website (similar, for instance, to that of their bank) where, unsuspectingly, they enter their e-banking credentials, credit card details and one-time passwords (OTP), which the fraudsters intercept in order to carry out unlawful money transfers and online purchases of goods, charging the accounts of their victims.

2. Online fraud under the pretext of computer repair

Citizens should also be very careful when receiving calls from strangers (typically from abroad, speaking English) who pose as technicians from a major IT company and inform them that their computer is supposedly infected with viruses. They then ask to install remote management software, ostensibly to fix the problem, and deceive them into “handing over” their personal e-banking credentials, as well as the one-time passwords (OTP) they receive at that moment via SMS or Viber, which the fraudsters use to “empty” their accounts.

3. Purchases and sales through online classified ads

Citizens should be especially cautious because fraudsters post online advertisements purporting to sell cars, mobile phones or other products and deceive prospective buyers, who send deposits or the entire amount, only never to receive what they purchased. On other occasions, when citizens attempt to sell a product through an online advertisement, they are persuaded by the perpetrators either that they have already been paid for the product they sold — chiefly by being shown a forged money-transfer confirmation — or that, supposedly by mistake, a larger sum has been credited to them, with the perpetrators then requesting the return of the difference.

4. Investment fraud

Citizens should also be very wary when approached by strangers, whether by telephone or by email, posing as employees of supposedly large investment firms based abroad and promising high returns by investing money through fictitious (fake) investment platforms on the Internet. Indeed, in order to be persuasive, in most cases these individuals speak Greek very well.

Unfortunately, those who place their trust in them invest their money, which they see “virtually” increasing, but when they request that the profits be paid out to them, they discover that this is not possible and that they had been victims of fraud.

 

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ONLINE FRAUD LAWYER

1. I have fallen victim to online fraud — what am I facing?

You are facing two parallel fronts. On the one hand, there is the criminal aspect against the perpetrators, who as a rule act anonymously or from abroad and are difficult to trace. On the other hand, there is the civil aspect against the bank, which under the PSD2 Directive and Law 4537/2018 is required to apply strong customer authentication and to react immediately to suspicious transactions. In practice, the substantive recovery of your money is achieved through proving the bank’s fault, not through identifying the perpetrator.

2. How will I get my money back?

The procedure begins with an immediate written dispute of the transaction lodged with the bank and a request for recall of the transfer within the first hours. If the bank refuses to refund the amount, a lawsuit is filed before the Multi-Member or Single-Member Court of First Instance, based on the provisions on the provision of payment services, the duty of care and security of the banking system, and Articles 914 and 281 of the Civil Code (AK). In parallel, a criminal complaint is filed with the Prosecutor’s Office of the Court of First Instance, which is forwarded to the Cybercrime Prosecution Division for criminal investigation.

3. Is the bank to blame for failing to protect me?

Very often yes, and this is the critical point. The bank is required to maintain systems for detecting unusual transactions, to immediately notify the receiving bank for recall of the transfer, and to apply two-factor authentication. If it failed to activate these mechanisms, if it did not respond in time to your complaint, or if it permitted an unusually large transfer without additional verification, its liability is established. Request in writing the recorded telephone calls with the employees and the transaction history — they constitute crucial evidentiary material.

4. Where do I file the criminal complaint and what documents do I need?

The criminal complaint is filed with the Prosecutor’s Office of the Court of First Instance of your place of residence, and from there it is forwarded to the Cybercrime Prosecution Division. You will need detailed account statements, screenshots from your e-banking, the suspicious emails or SMS with their full headers, copies of communications with the bank, the bank’s written response to the dispute, IP details of the perpetrator if available, as well as any element documenting the chronological sequence. The faster these are gathered, the greater the chances of recovery.

5. How long does the claim for compensation take?

It depends on the bank’s stance. In some cases, after extra-judicial notice and documentation of liability, the bank proposes a settlement within a few months. When the case is taken to court, the first-instance judgment is generally issued within 18 to 30 months, with an appeal possibly following. In parallel, an application for interim measures may be filed for provisional protection. The criminal proceedings run independently and as a rule take longer due to the difficulty of locating the perpetrators.

6. What role does the specialised lawyer play?

The online fraud lawyer combines knowledge of criminal, civil and banking law with an understanding of technology. They undertake the immediate extra-judicial notice to the bank in the critical first hours, the drafting of the criminal complaint with the proper technical foundation, the assessment of the credit institution’s fault, the gathering of recorded conversations and logs, as well as the filing of the compensation lawsuit. Our firm has handled numerous cases of phishing, investment fraud and fraud through online ads, with significant successes in claiming compensation from banks.


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