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You have to be really careful who you trust with your money. As you’re about to find out in this story, some people who make promises and try to convince you that you can trust them are really trying to scam you.

The story involves a dad who wants to send money to his home country, and his two children want to make sure he doesn’t get scammed.

The dad still ends up getting scammed, but his son is able to turn the tables on the scammer and help his dad get his money back.

Let’s read all about it.

Try to scam my dad out of £20,000? Prepare to have regulators on your case and pay through the nose.

So this happened a couple of years ago. My dad occasionally sends money back to his home country via these money transfer companies and he had recently sold his shop so wanted so send some of the money back home.

Now my dad isn’t the most savvy of people and me and my brother regularly have to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t get scammed.

We were a bit worried when he said he wanted to send such a large amount of money in one go and suggested using a bank to do it, while it would cost a fair amount in fees, it would be legit and would arrive on him.

However he wanted to go with this money transfer company that he saw an ad for in the newspaper as they had lower fees and promised the money would arrive in a week or so.

They tried to help their dad out.

So we accompany him to the shop and discuss how much it would cost and when it would arrive and the guy gives his best assurances that the money will arrive and gives a good price and of course we pay him the money and leave.

We weren’t stupid enough to pay in cash and have no trace whatsoever. We took precautions and paid by debit card so there is a trace in case he tries anything funny.

So a couple days goes by and dad periodically checks his bank account back home and checks if the money arrived and of course we say things like “Give it time, it will come soon” etc.

After two weeks still nothing so he calls up and asks what’s going on.

I think they got scammed.

The guy says it’s just delayed but nothing to worry about, so he hangs up satisfied.

A week later another call another excuse, we think ok this is irritating but fair enough and not much we can do but be patient.

More time goes by and the excuses are now getting less professional, now it’s “Oh we had to use the money you gave us to pay off the previous guy who sent money so when the next guy pays you’ll get yours.”

At this point we’re getting seriously worried and thinking wth, is this guy going bankrupt or something.

They eventually stopped trusting the guy.

We investigate our options with the bank and seeing if we can do any claim backs but they’re not too helpful as it wasn’t a fraud case and he paid willingly so not their problem.

We go to the shop to have a conversation with the guy and see if he actually plans on paying up or not and give him one last chance for benefit of the doubt.

And of course he gives us the same bs assurances and nothing still happens two weeks later.

Now the Pro Revenge begins that you have been waiting for.

OP’s brother knew just what to do.

In the UK all financial organisations no matter how small, are heavily regulated by government authorities and if you run a business to do with money they will be watching you carefully.

My brother being a banker, knew exactly which authorities to contact and he launched a complaint against this organisation. He sent them proof of the payment and explained how they refused to send the money.

Within a couple of days they came down hard on him.

Now instead of my dad chasing him, he started chasing after my dad begging him to withdraw the complaint as it was affecting his business as the regulator was threatening investigations and a possible shut down. He said I will send it soon but please withdraw the complaint.

Here’s how it worked out.

Of course we knew that as soon as the complaint was withdrawn it would be near impossible to re-complain so we refused to withdraw until he paid up with compensation of course.

We also made sure that all correspondence was made through the regulator as he tried to call up my dad and get him to withdraw the case with his sob stories, which we also mentioned to the regulator.

After he realised he wasn’t getting anywhere, he eventually paid up the full £20,000 and a further £1500 in compensation for all the distress he caused and a letter of apology to my dad and the case was withdrawn.

He has scammed other people like my dad with his business but as they weren’t educated enough to go the regulator with a complaint, he must have gotten away with a lot over the years so it felt good to make him realise that he can’t mess with everyone he perceives to be an easy target.

I’m glad their dad got his money back, but I wish they hadn’t withdrawn the complaint. That guy needs to have his business shut down.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

This person would’ve handled it differently.

Another person points out the problem with withdrawing the complaint.

This person doesn’t think there was any revenge in this story at all.

Here’s another good point.

I don’t think they should’ve withdrawn the complaint. The guy scammed them. He’s scammed who knows how many people before them. He’ll scam who knows how many more people, and he’ll probably get away with it because they won’t know to report him.

They did nothing to stop this thief.