How a Revolut and Bank of Ireland customer lost €4k in a scam - with no reimbursement in sight

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8.30pm, 3 Nov 2026 Share options WHEN CAROLYN RAMSAY got a text from Bank of Ireland (or so she thought) last July saying a payment of €1,750 could not be authorised, and asking her to press ’9′ if she hadn’t made this transaction herself, she did so.

“A member of staff will contact you shortly,” came the reply.

Soon she got a call from a man calling himself Andrew O’Keefe.

He said there had been a fraud within Bank of Ireland, which was under investigation.

He advised her to transfer money to one of her other bank accounts, if she had one.

“He said, ‘Do you have another account?’ He didn’t mention Revolut.

I said, ‘Yes, I have a Revolut account’,” Ramsay explains.

Correspondence continued via a WhatsApp account carrying the name “Andrew O’Keefe (Support)”.

These texts, seen by The Journal, show that the person knew Carolyn’s name, including the correct spelling.

Carolyn Ramsay has shared her story to draw attention to some important weaknesses in the banks' anti-fraud systems.

The texts were well written and used familiar Bank of Ireland terminology.

For example, she was advised that her Banking 365 (the Bank of Ireland online service) pin would remain the same, and she should delete the BoI app and redownload it.

She was talked through the process of transferring money out of the allegedly compromised Bank of Ireland savings account.

She transferred €4,352 to her own Revolut in two instalments, one electronically and one in a Bank of Ireland branch.

Then she transferred the money from her Revolut to what ‘Andrew O’Keefe’ told her was a new, replacement Bank of Ireland account.

The name on the account to which she transferred the money was her own.

“I made the transfer and that was the end of it.

Then they disappeared,” Ramsay said.

The new account was a fake and her money was gone.

The original message from the scammer purporting to be called 'Andrew O'Keefe' and a member of staff at Bank of Ireland.

Investigation Except that wasn’t quite the end of it.

Ramsay followed up with both Bank of Ireland and Revolut’s fraud teams, and reported the incident to gardaí.

She also did some sleuthing herself.

She is confident she has identified the scammers and how they harvested her name and phone number.

As yet, however, no one has been brought to justice and she has not recovered her money.

Payment fraud has exploded in Ireland, increasing by 27% last year alone – and that’s just the reported cases.

Advertisement Ramsay is sharing her story because she wants to draw attention to what she believes are some crucial weaknesses in both Bank of Ireland and Revolut’s anti-fraud defences for keeping their customers safe from scammers.

Firstly, no red flags were raised by Bank of Ireland about Ramsay’s withdrawals from her account, despite the fact that these were completely atypical – and large – transactions for her.

She has been a customer with Bank of Ireland for many years.

Secondly, Revolut did not query the onward payments to the scammer’s account, despite the fact that the name she entered as payee – her own – and the international bank account number (Iban) cannot have aligned, since the Iban was attached to an account held by the scammer or an associate.

The Journal has also raised a third problem with Revolut: the fact that the lost money went to a Revolut account, identifiable as such from the Iban, but Revolut still hasn’t confirmed it will be able to return it to Ramsay.

Here’s what the banks had to say for themselves.

Bank of Ireland Bank of Ireland says it has the technology to spot and deter attempted payment fraud.

However, the large and unusual withdrawals Ramsay made from Bank of Ireland following a phishing call proceeded smoothly, and nobody from the bank contacted her to query them.

Just a month before Ramsay was defrauded, Bank of Ireland issued a press release boasting of its “new AI-led pattern recognition technology that can help spot suspicious activity before a payment leaves the bank”.

It said its AI understands how accounts are typically used, helping it identify potentially suspicious behaviour earlier.

Bank of Ireland has previously drawn attention to the particular scam Ramsay was subjected to.

It calls it the ‘safe account’ scam, and warned of a spike in this type of activity in June 2025 and again in June 2026, just weeks before Ramsay withdrew the money from her account – albeit the two-step scam Ramsay was subjected to seems to have been a particularly sophisticated one.

The response Ramsay has received from Bank of Ireland has been categorical: it does not believe it has any case to answer and directed its customer towards Revolut.

In a letter to Ramsay in August, Bank of Ireland said that while it appreciated that Ramsay was “subsequently” the victim of a phishing scam, the transfers from her Bank of Ireland account to her own Revolut “were not fraudulent transactions from the bank’s perspective”.

“The transactions were authorised by you and were sent to an account belonging to you.

For this reason, these payments cannot be treated as unauthorised or fraudulent transactions on your Bank of Ireland account,” a bank official wrote.

As for Ramsay’s concerns about fraud detection and prevention measures, Bank of Ireland said that because the payments were authorised by Ramsay and went to an account held by her, they “presented a lower fraud risk profile” than if they had gone directly to an unknown third party and “would not necessarily be expected to trigger intervention measures”.

“Any potential recovery of funds must be pursued directly with Revolut,” the Bank of Ireland official wrote.

“I have found no evidence of any error or service failure on the part of Bank of Ireland.” Bank of Ireland told The Journal that it cannot comment on specific cases, but reiterated that in a case where a customer transfers funds to their own Revolut and onward to a scammer, the fraudulent payment has been made from Revolut.

As such, it’s a matter for Revolut to initiate any recall of the funds.

Bank of Ireland “cannot” do so, it said.

“Fraudsters are commonly using Revolut accounts to extract stolen money.

Consumers should be very wary of this,” Bank of Ireland said.

It added that it will never call and ask a customer to transfer their money to another account to keep it safe, and if a customer receives such a call they should hang up immediately and phone Bank of Ireland themselves.

Revolut response Revolut’s support team, meanwhile, told Ramsay in an email in August in response to her fraud report that it was “actively pursuing the recovery”....