For those who know about law

[matty-hodgson]

has she claimed she withdrew this amount of cash from a cash point? (ATM) cos £3000+ is a heck of a lot to get from an ATM. don't most accounts have a daily limit well below this?

[Englander]

has she claimed she withdrew this amount of cash from a cash point? (ATM) cos £3000+ is a heck of a lot to get from an ATM. don't most accounts have a daily limit well below this?

For my Abbey current account, the daily maximum is £500 done over 2 withdrawals (i.e. £250 x 2)

[SiM]

has she claimed she withdrew this amount of cash from a cash point? (ATM) cos £3000+ is a heck of a lot to get from an ATM. don't most accounts have a daily limit well below this?

Yeh, good point, given the fact that she can't repay £3,000 of owed money (it's hardly a huge sum of money), I don't think she will have access to a high end account that can withdraw that much. I doubt someone who has an account that can withdraw £3,000 in one hit will be desperate enough to risk a criminal record and jail time for a mere £3,000.

Therefore she must have hustled your mum.

[Krakkenbus]

Yeh, good point, given the fact that she can't repay £3,000 of owed money (it's hardly a huge sum of money), I don't think she will have access to a high end account that can withdraw that much. I doubt someone who has an account that can withdraw £3,000 in one hit will be desperate enough to risk a criminal record and jail time for a mere £3,000.

Therefore she must have hustled your mum.

You can give your bank notice and then pop into a branch and withdraw it there over the counter.

[neonplanet40]

No it is from the Credit Union and you can withdraw as much as you like. I think we only have Credit Unions in Ireland.

[Zhaoman]

No it is from the Credit Union and you can withdraw as much as you like. I think we only have Credit Unions in Ireland.

Are you kidding?? What about AIB, Bank of Ireland, Anglo-Irish Banks and all the other banks like the Royal Bank of Scotland operating in Ireland! The banking crisis hit Ireland hard too with AIB and Bank of Ireland shares worth less than 10% of what they were one and half years ago. Unless you live in a really remote part of Ireland like Achill or somewhere...

[neonplanet40]

No i mean i think the credit union as an establishment is only in Ireland. I could be wrong. Of course we have other banks

[Zhaoman]

No i mean i think the credit union as an establishment is only in Ireland. I could be wrong. Of course we have other banks

Oh kk :biglol:

Severe misunderstanding going on there I'm a bit rusty now at Leaving Cert Business but I think Credit Unions do exist elsewhere. I'm pretty sure I saw some in Belfast and Cardiff.

[IronWarrior]

Don't worry about not having any paper proof to back up this "trust fund", the court when you take it that far will see that your mum and this women and her friends had a verbal agreement which is seen in the eyes of the law is as legally binding as a written one.

/yay learned something from Common Law 1

Sorry to hear about this, I guess this was something for Christmas, crap time for something like this to happen.

[Krakkenbus]

No i mean i think the credit union as an establishment is only in Ireland. I could be wrong. Of course we have other banks

Afaik the credit union actually lets you withdraw twice the amount you have in your own account, say she had £4000 saved, I think she can withdraw up to £8000

[matty-hodgson]

Afaik the credit union actually lets you withdraw twice the amount you have in your own account, say she had £4000 saved, I think she can withdraw up to £8000

how does that make ANY sense? they let you withdraw twice as much as you actually own?

[Krakkenbus]

how does that make ANY sense? they let you withdraw twice as much as you actually own?

Well to an extent its a loan, but yea.. thats the way it works

[Saracen]

how does that make ANY sense? they let you withdraw twice as much as you actually own?

It''s the point of credit unions. They're essentially a sort of localised way of avoiding banks and their commercial objectives. The idea is that you save when you can, and borrow when you need to. From what I remember, the idea is that they lend ONLY to members, and at interest rates that aren't exploitative, so you need to have demonstrated a track record to get loans. It keeps administration down, they're not financing the "casino" operations of banks or paying out shareholders dividends, etc. They're operated in the interests of the members. It's a kind-of a community thing. There are regulations, and they aren't entirely trivial to set up. but they are much less rigorously (as I understand it) regulated than full commercial banks, largely because they can be set up on a much smaller scale, both in terms of capitalisation and the type and scale of "loan" they offer.

And they're not just NI, Neon, they operate all over the place. They used to be quite common but had, as I understand it, somewhat fallen out of favour in recent years. But there's certainly been something ogf a resurgence in the last few years, and the failure of that "Christmas Club" company, whatever it was called, a year or two back encouraged it.

The irony is that I was going suggest that your Mum look out for a local credit union as an alternative to the "woman at work" scenario, as this type of saving is really what they're all about.

[Saracen]

Don't worry about not having any paper proof to back up this "trust fund", the court when you take it that far will see that your mum and this women and her friends had a verbal agreement which is seen in the eyes of the law is as legally binding as a written one.

/yay learned something from Common Law 1

In theory, yes. But it's all about what you can prove.

The whole point if written agreements is that they're a considerable help in proving the existence of, and terms of, any verbal agreement.

Suppose I took you to small claims court over the £1 million pounds I lent you last year. You, of course, are going to deny I did. The court certainly aren't going to just take my word for it. Unfortunately.

Oh, and for "prove", I'm talking about the civil standard of 'balance of probability', not the 'beyond reasonable doubt' criminal standard.

[Saracen]

To begin with, i know what my mum done was stupid. But she trusts people a bit too much I think and this will be a VERY hard lesson for her. It is convenient for her in work and they all had what could be called a group trust. I knew nothing about it.

Unfortunately, nice people have a habit of assuming other people are like them, and trusting them. And sometimes it bites. There's an old saying (well, and old one of mine anyway) that cynicism is realism borne of experience. The more you see this kind of reflection of human nature, the more cynical and the less trusting you become. Having seen human nature in operation too many times, I'm something of a cynic. I don't just assume the worst of everybody until they prove otherwise, but I sure have one eye on the possibility, and if offered a gift Trojan Horse, I always assume it's full of Greek soldiers until I've checked that it isn't. "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes."

Sadly, in some ways, your Mum will be a bit more cynical after this than she was going in. It's not an especially attractive or happy-making character trait, which I know as I've got in in a good helping, but it does at least aid in self-protection.

....

Unfortunately there were no receipts etc. Just cash in hand during work which would have been in front of CCTV cameras. There were 8 people in total who gave money to this girl. All of them have lost their money so does all them accounts not hold up without paper contractual evidence?

I'd think it would go a long way towards establishing the "balance of probability" proof I mentioned, yes. I'd hate to second-guess a court, but I'd assume that that would be pretty persuasive. It might not establish individual balances, But I'd have thought it would be sufficient to establish a scheme was in place.

...

I don't even think its about the money now. my mum just wants this women to get what she deserves. If that's a criminal record then that's fine with us.

She has reported to the police that she was mugged and they have a report. The women who dealt with this in the police office is out till Monday so we have been told to ring back then. I will know more then and will be able to get a bigger picture. I assume all 8 people will be writing a statement for the police.

A comparison between what she actually withdrew and what she reported to the police might be interesting. If she had all the money, withdrew it all and then alleged it'd been nicked by a mugger, then it might be very hard to prove. If you're right, though, and she'd spent it, then that implies she either didn't report £3000 being nicked to police, in which case where is the money, or she did, in which case the police will perhaps want an explanation of why she said a lot more was nicked than she actually withdrew, if she withdrew anything.

But banks have a legal duty of confidentiality, and aren't likely to just hand over transaction details if a police officer walks in and asks nicely. My guess is they'll need a warrant, which'd require establishing grounds for wanting it. How hard or easy it'd be for them to get it, I've no idea ..... or even if they'd see it as high enough priority to much effort in. By cynical nature suggests that if the allegation is just that she ripped of the money, it'll be a lower priority than if she made false reports of a mugging to police.

It has to be at least a possibility that if your suspicions are reported to police they'll take it seriously enough to spend the time actively pursuing it.

.... The whole situation strikes me as being much too convenient for a mugging to have ever existed. My mum said she noticed something was up last week when she asked for the money which is why she doesn't believe it.

What I think has happened is that this women has been spending the money all year and when it came to pay out she had not the funds to do so. So what i would like to know is how much did she ACTUALLY withdraw yesterday before she was "mugged". If it was the full £3000-4000 which she should have been doing then maybe I will be move inclined to believe her. But I'm wondering if the police will check this?

As described, I'd certainly agree it's suggestive, but while that goes some way to raising suspicions, it isn't evidence. My guess would be that if she actually withdrew all the money, proving she wasn't mugged will be next to impossible if she's half sensible and thought her story through. So if she was spending the money, it may come down to whether she had savings herself already in the account.

Suppose she had £5k already in the account. She received another £3k over the year and spent £3k. One way of looking at it is that she was spending other people's money, but another is that she was spending her own, and that she now has £2k in the account and she took the other £3k out in cash ..... then got "mugged". If so, that £3k in cash will now be in a safe hiding place somewhere. Over the next few months, she has a couple of "lucky" lottery tickets and wins a few hundred. Maybe she "sells" something and raises a few hundred. It's easy enough to justify relatively small sums over a period if you're sensible and inventive.

So if she ripped off the money herself, it may come down to whether he did so because she had to having already spent it and therefore not got it to pay back, or whether she just decided to do it because she could.

However, [B]if[B] if she didn't have the money to withdraw, and if she reported having withdrawn £3k and didn't, then having it "mugged", and if the police can get whatever they need to get transaction and/or account details from the bank (or credit union, or whatever), then she's got some explaining to do.

So assuming you're right and the mugging didn't happen, and despite all the suggestive circumstances it still seems it's at least possible that she's telling the truth and it did, there's at least the possibility that she'll be held to account for it, if it's reported to the police.

Of course, unless what you, or your Mum and her friends, suspect to have happened is reported to police, they have no way of knowing this side of the story. If getting her held to account is now the agenda (and were it my Mum being ripped off, it would be for me) then it's got to be worth a try. The chances of success? Dunno.

.....

The women got "mugged" yesterday but did not ring and tell these people what happened to their money. Isn't that the first thing you would do? It took a friends of hers to let slip to someone else before my mum knew anything about it. From what we know she hasn't offered to give the money back in any shape or form and her husband has just said " she hopes their is no animosity towards her".

Well, if she really was mugged, it could be that she was still in some sort of shock?

It could also be that she was embarrassed as hell, not quite sure what to say and so said nothing. Putting off nasty experiences until you can;t put them off any longer is a common enough human trait.

If she was genuinely mugged, then she may not be able to pay it back. And she may take the view that as she's a victim too, and was effectively doing the others a favour by doing all the leg work, why should she suffer again on top of having done the legwork and being mugged.

Suppose it was your Mum that had been collecting the money, and then been mugged? Isn't is possible that she'd put off having to tell the others, especially while she got over the initial shock of being mugged? And might you not be saying something like you "hope their is no animosity towards her"?

It all comes down to whether the mugging was real or not .... and it's not unknown for muggers to watch people coming out of banks, or maybe credit unions, and figure that there's a good chance, especially just before Christmas, that they've withdrawn money and so target them.

Presumably, this woman has some kind of bank book, or could get a statement from the credit union that would show the full £3k-£4k being withdrawn. I can't she why she couldn't either produce or get that kind of evidence, and without requiring police to get a court order or warrant or whatever, and I can't she why she wouldn't be willing to in the circumstances, IF the mugging is genuine. I mean, if it really happened, then she could prove she withdrew the money so why wouldn't she be willing to do so??

It might be worth asking her to do that before going to police.

[kalniel]

Thoughts on insurance avenues?