Legal firm sues Lloyds over £113m cyber scam

Two sisters, Amy and Emma Daramola, who worked as Lloyds customer service assistants, provided Glasgow fraudster Feezan Hameed Choudhary who then used the information to trick victims into transferring funds to him by making them think he was calling them from the bank.

While the sisters received £150 for each bank statement they handed over, another Lloyds employee, business adviser Jones Opare-Addo, opened a network of accounts through which the stolen money was then laundered.

Of at least 750 victims caught up in the £113m fraud, 474 banked with Lloyds.

Choudhary, 25, who used the stolen money to fund a lavish lifestyle involving £100,000 shopping trips at Harrods, was jailed for 11 years last week.

But now Pitman Blackstock White Solicitors claim to have had their company account drained by Choudhary and his team of international conmen.

Ross White, a partner at Pitman Blackstock White, which operates around the Forest of Dean and Gloucester, claimed the fraudsters had information about his firm that “could only have been known to Lloyds”.

He said: “The distress and turmoil caused by the fraud was immense and has been life changing.

“I was therefore very disappointed and shocked when Lloyds refused to reimburse the stolen funds.”

Lloyds has said it had reimbursed customers “where it was identified that an employee was linked to the fraud”.