By Aaron Miller-
Western Union has been ordered to pay back $586 million after admitting inadvertently aiding and abetting wiring fraud the American Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice ruled the company failed to properly protect its customers against fraudsters.
The ruling took place in the U.S means hundreds and Americans and Canadians will be eligible .
“It’s definitely a win for those victims,” said Todd Kossow, director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Midwest region office.
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SCAMS
A variety of scams are covered by the settlement include promised prizes, advance-fee loans, discounted items for money paid up front, as well as personal scams like fraudsters who pretended to be family members, police officers or romantic partners.
Halifax Regional Police sent out a release on Tuesday stating that anyone who used Western Union to transfer funds to a fraudster between January 2004 and January 2017 was eligible to submit a claim.
During that period, there were over 550,000 complaints made to Western Union directly, reporting total losses of $632 million, according to the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
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Kossow said that’s “just the tip of the iceberg.”
“We think actual losses and actual victims, the numbers are much higher than that.”
FTC spokesperson Frank Dorman told The Eye Of Media.Com that the majority of victims were from the U.S.
“Eighty per cent of the complaints we received were from U.S. victims. The other 20 per cent were from around the world. It is a disgrace that this could have happened, but Western Union now have a huge compensation process to implement”.
Western Union is normally a very reliable medium of transferring money, but fraudsters have the determination and drive to infiltrate any organisation, however reputable. What matters most is for individuals and money transfer organisations to be vigilant in their operations.
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