Standard Bank Customers Beware

BEWARE ALL STANDARD BANK CUSTOMERS - On 19th June 2025 my husband was de*****ed of over R1m from his personal Standard Bank accounts and our business accounts. The professional *****sters began by sending messages to his phone that looked like they had come from the bank saying that R17,000 had been paid to Woolworths, R23,399 at Take Alot and so on - then a message came through saying multiple online activities had been detected on the account with a reference number. It said if you did not do them please contact our department on ***. He then received a call from this number on his cell, which had the Standard Bank Logo on it. The *****ster explained she was from the ***** Department and she could assist him to reverse them. He logged onto his account. Not once whilst talking to her did he give her a pin number but he did scan the QR codes she sent. She was into his banking profile, and he continued to receive alerts saying this amount, that amount had been paid out. All of these were fictitious. Some were reversals of the fictitious amounts that had come through. Meanwhile she was upping the daily limits, setting up beneficiaries, and paying huge amounts out - no alerts on the changing of limits, on the amounts paid out, or on the beneficiaries. Once he realised our accounts had been cleared out, he called the real ***** department and spent 2 hours on the phone whilst they contacted the other banks where the monies had been paid too. We were told the beneficiary accounts had been placed on hold until investigations were done. It was only on the 28 July 2025 that the bank told us that the police can submit a section 205 subpoena to the relevant banks to obtain information on the account holders. Neither Standard Bank or the police had mentioned this before. Only on the 12th August 2025 were we given the account numbers and told that the feedback was slow, but they were getting somewhere! Finally on 11 September 2025 some 12 weeks after the ***** had occurred, we get an email stating that the bank was not at fault, but they would offer us a goodwill gesture of 25%. The email was a generic letter as they forgot to take out the (Personalize with name and surname) and called my husband Brain instead of Brian even though it came from the guy doing the investigation. We appealed this decision, and they came back last week to say no it was not the banks error. SO BEWARE IF YOU BANK WITH STANDARD BANK - at no point did they tell us how the *****ster got into the baking profile, how did 2 independent log ins not register, why did the real movements on the account not come as alerts, what do they use QR codes for? There was nothing on their banking app to warn customers at the time about QR codes. What has happened to our money when holds were put on the beneficiaries accounts? Many of the questions asked were met with "this is internal information which we can only share with the NFO/OBS for security reasons as part of our evidence for the ***** investigation". What did the ***** investigation entail that took 12 weeks and only came up with the generic response. IT ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH - How many people does this have to happen to before they increase security for their clients? It is beyond scary how unsafe our monies are with this bank. It has happened to many and if this has happened to you, please contact me ***