The Rennes Court of Appeal ordered Orange Bank and Crédit Mutuel to reimburse a plaintiff who had lost thousands of euros in a scam. The latter thought he had bought a car on the classified ads site La Centrale.
Everything can happen very quickly on the Internet, and when you think you’re getting a good deal, you can get scammed without having a real way to get what you’re due. The man, called “Mr. U,” learned this the hard way. He was scammed, in 2019, by a man who took him through a payment platform that is now closed, to buy a vehicle – the color of which he never saw – seen on the classified ads site La Centrale . On appeal, a few days ago, he won his case with Orange Bank and Crédit Mutuel, who refused to reimburse him.
The complainant never saw the car purchased nor saw his money again
What happened ? On July 18, 2019, Mr. U purchased a Volkswagen vehicle from an individual, on the La Centrale website, for an amount of 17,000 euros. While he offers his seller to pay him using a bank check, the latter refuses and invites Mr U to use the Fusepay platform, which, we later learned, was a fraudulent site . At that point, the victim obviously ignores it.
Mr. U makes the transfer from his Crédit Mutuel account, all to an Orange Bank account. He ultimately does not recover the vehicle, since its seller cancels the return appointment at the last minute.
When he was unable to obtain a refund, the complainant filed a complaint on August 9, 2019 and, a few months later, sued Orange Bank and Crédit Mutuel to obtain damages, justified by the hassle caused by the purchase. aborted and the disappearance into nature of his money. For Mr. U, everything still remains to be done.
The court of appeal focused on verifying the identity of the seller
On July 8, 2021, the Rennes judicial court dismissed Mr. U’s case and ordered him, ironically, to pay the legal costs incurred by Orange Bank and Crédit Mutuel. Continuing the procedure, he ended up appealing and winning his case. On April 16, 2024, the Rennes Court of Appeal rendered a judgment in which it jointly ordered Orange Bank and Caisse de Crédit Mutuel to reimburse the victim, in compensation for its damage, for an amount of 17 000 euros, to which we must add 3,500 euros as well as reimbursement of legal costs incurred throughout the procedure. But what was the reasoning of the court of appeal?
It’s all been about identity, and verifying that identity. The procedure made it possible to understand that the customer contact (of the seller) left on the now closed Fusepay site was in fact a telephone number managed by a Belgian Voxbone service, which provides virtual numbers and is rather renowned for being a den of scammers. It was impossible to identify the seller here.
The garage on which the vehicle originally depended was also the victim of fraudulent use of its postal address, and Fusepay bank accounts were created through identity theft.
For the judges, Orange Bank and Crédit Mutuel failed in verifying the identity of the fraudster
For the Court of Appeal, Orange Bank did not provide sufficient evidence showing that it attempted to verify the identity of the scammer, who had opened an account with it. The magistrates added that Orange Bank should have been alerted by the multiplicity of transfer operations carried out as soon as the fraudster’s account was opened, which according to the judges ” could only alert the bank to an operation which presented all the appearances of a fraudulent account “. For them, effective verification of the identity of the account holder would have prevented the fraud. Mr U cannot therefore be accused of having been negligent.
As for Crédit Mutuel, the Court of Appeal accuses it of having failed in its general duty to provide information on the reliability of the Fusepay site. The banking establishment should in fact have informed him that he was heading towards a dubious site, especially since he had taken the precaution of questioning the bank about the reliability of Fusepay. After several years of proceedings, all is well that ends for Mr U.
Source : Court of Cassation
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