Scammers stole £5,608 from my Wise business account: Can I get it back? CRANE ON THE CASE

I run a small business which makes vitamin supplements for horses. In February, I lost half of my company's working capital, £5,608, to a scam.

I was called by someone who pretended to work for Wise, the e-money app where I keep my business funds. They said they had detected fraud on my account.

They advised me to block several attempted purchases of things like jewellery, whisky and travel, each costing about £5,000.

I was then told to follow steps to ‘secure’ my account, such as resetting my password.

The scammer then informed me that an unauthorized charge to the travel agent Trip.com had been attempted, for a return flight from London to South Korea.

I declined this, and moments later, received a text containing a security code.

I provided the code to the caller, believing it was for blocking further unauthorised transactions.

In reality, it was the authorization code that enabled the fraudulent payment of £5,608 to Trip to go through.

I then received a second call from someone pretending to be from the Financial Conduct Authority.

This is when I realised I was being scammed, as I looked it up and found that the FCA wouldn't make unsolicited calls like this.

I notified Wise, but it didn't reimburse my funds and closed the case. H.S, Sussex

Helen Crane of This is Money replies: As a young small business owner, it is tough enough trying to get your company off the ground - without scammers trotting off with your hard-earned cash.

You told me you had taken a leap of faith in trying to turn your passion for horses into a career, and that the experience had been 'all-consuming.'

You were then left 'devastated' by the loss of your money, feeling as if you had no recourse.

It was particularly upsetting as you had recently received a grant of around £5,000 to expand the business, which was completely wiped out.

You thought you were protecting your money by engaging with this scammer, but in fact it was a clever double-bluff.

In hindsight, you think they attempted the first few transactions, which they then told you to block, in order to gain your trust.

We don't know how this person got hold of your account details, in order to make these purchases. It may be that you were tricked into providing personal information at another time, for example in a phishing email.

But it appears that they had everything they needed to make a purchase, other than that final step - the two factor authentication code you would receive to your mobile phone to verify the payment.

You believed they were trying to help you, so when they asked for the text message code to confirm the transaction, you handed it over and your cash was gone.

You also received a call from the same scammer or an associate, pretending to be from financial watchdog the FCA.

The FCA says it will never contact customers directly to ask for banking information, so if you receive a call from someone saying that is who they are, hang up.

Wise, formerly known as Transferwise, automatically blocked two further payments that were attempted, and you also received a notification to your phone warning you of suspected fraud.

This type of fraud sadly looks set to become more common. Scammers are increasingly trying to access people's accounts to make expensive purchases, rather than persuading their victims to send them cash.

This is because new regulations came in in October which mean banks and finance apps have to reimburse victims of authorised push payment fraud.

This is when a fraudster tricks a person into sending them money. A common way to do this is to pretend to be from the bank and claim their account has been compromised, so the customer needs to transfer their cash to a 'safe' account to protect it.

Now banks have been forced to pay these customers back, they are desperate to avoid it happening and have added extra security - leading scammers to try other methods.

Purchases aren't covered by the same rules and it is also more difficult for a bank to get money back from a retailer - or in this case an airline - than to claw it back from another personal bank account.

Distressed, you contacted Wise and Trip immediately to ask if they could help you retrieve your funds.

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Several weeks later, and after some back and forth, Trip eventually agreed to reimburse you half of the funds. It helped that the return flight had not yet been used.

However, this still left you £2,803.91 out of pocket.

You told me getting help from Wise proved trickier.

Despite you contacting the e-money institution (it doesn't have a banking licence) within two hours of the scam, you said it did not appear to investigate the issue or attempt to recover your money.

You were then notified that your case had been closed, and followed up with emails which you say were ignored.

I contacted Wise, and after looking at your case again it agreed to reimburse you the remaining £2,803.91.

A spokesman for Wise said: 'We are deeply sorry for the experience faced by H.S. This sophisticated impersonation scam demonstrates the complex tricks and social engineering used by scammers and the lengths that criminals will go to separate people from their money.

'If someone asks you to share security codes or one time passcodes given to you via your bank or financial institution over the phone, it’s a major red flag indicating a scam - hang up immediately, and if you have shared any details, contact your financial institution so they can keep your account safe.

“At Wise, we are dedicated to preventing and combating financial crime, and to ensuring the safety of our customers and platform. We are constantly improving our systems to prevent, detect and act on any potential instances of financial crime and abuse of our services.'

I'm pleased to have been able to help, and hope the return of your cash means you can get back in the saddle and continue growing your business.