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– The Consumer Council has seen many examples of current legislation that does not work, says legal director Tone Molvær Berset to DN. One of the cases is the case that the Supreme Court will address soon.
The case concerns a 36-year-old Kristiansand resident who was the subject of BankID fraud in 2017. The man has been sentenced in two courts to pay NOK 100,000 in compensation to Easybank. The man’s BankID was abused to obtain loans and credits at 14 banks for a total of NOK 1,582,328.
Although a married couple was legally convicted of committing fraud against the husband, and the court ruled that he had been in charge of the married couple, the appeals court found that the husband had been liable for damages.
The reason was that he declared in court that the BankID code chip was in a bag in a drawer in a closet at the workplace, a company he owns and manages, so it had been available to others. The fact that the man refused to write the personal code somewhere where one needs to use the code chip did not matter.
BankID fraud
- BankID is a form of electronic identification.
- 3.9 million Norwegians have a BankID, of which 1.9 million are mobile users.
- BankID is used to identify yourself when you log into the bank online, in the public, and other places where you need to identify yourself electronically.
- By accessing a person’s personal password and the person’s code chip, you can obtain loans on behalf of that person.
- In recent years, the judiciary has handled a series of cases that BankID has abused. Several people are convicted of fraud with another person’s BankID. In other cases, victims of BankID scams have been ordered to pay compensation to banks.
million Amount
– Fraud victims are still responsible for paying millions to the bank, even in cases where the author has confessed. When victims are exposed to scams, they are almost unjustified. The burden on those who have experienced this is great: It is considered very unfair to have to be responsible for the losses that others have inflicted on you, says the legal director of the Consumer Council.
Attorney Marius Andre Stokke represented the victim of the fraud in the first two court cases. It was also he who appealed the case to the Supreme Court. In February, the country’s highest court decided it should be considered. Since Stokke does not have a court of appeal to the Supreme Court, attorney Amund Noss at the Kluge law firm took over the case.
– Economically, this is not the most lucrative case for Kluge. We decided to take the case because the judgment of the Court of Appeal seems to be unreasonable. Many people have been in a very difficult situation due to strict practice in this area, Noss tells DN. He is pleased that the Consumer Council wants to act as a party helper.
– It means a lot to get this support, says Noss.
Participation of the Consumer Council also means that Kluge’s lawyer, Asle Bjelland, will act as a proxy for the Consumer Council, provided that the Supreme Court approves that the Consumer Council acts as a party aide.
– Extremely unreasonable
It is rare for the Consumer Council to act as an assistant in court cases. But in recent years, the consumer organization has come up several times when they have chosen to help. When small savings, Ivar Petter Røeggen sued DNB, after losing large sums of so-called structured savings products, the Consumer Council was at his side.
Just over two months ago, the Consumer Council won another case against DNB. Then there was the management fee demanded by the fund savers.
– We are in an area where you have a strong player against a consumer. Such a large money demand from the bank against the consumer is seriously experienced and can be very drastic for the private economy. Furthermore, it is not reasonable that the person who has been exposed to fraud is financially responsible for the actions of others. We hope that in this decision the Supreme Court will clarify what the evaluations should be and how the evidence should be evaluated. Hopefully, it will lead to fewer such cases, says Berset.
The jurisprudence in this area has been diverse. Until The Borgarting Court of Appeals dismissed a woman last December for the claim by two banks, mostly banks confirmed their claims in similar cases. However, following the Borgarting Court of Appeals ruling, several fraud victims have been successful.
Read BankID’s scam DN coverage
Not only
Figures from the Norwegian Center for Information Security (NorSIS) show that 150,000 people over the age of 18 have suffered abuse of their own identity in the past two years. How many people are exposed to BankID fraud is uncertain.
DN is aware, among other things, of a specific case in which the damage claims amount to NOK 3 million and where a single supplier has had to sell the property to pay the banks. In another case, DN has written about whether the fraud victim has to hire private investigators after being sentenced to pay millions in compensation in the district court. This is how spyware was installed on the victim’s computer, allowing scammers to intercept personal code used by the bank’s client. The victim was later acquitted of the bank’s damages claim, but still the victim had to pay her own considerable legal costs.
– The Consumer Council is seeing an increase in the number of people who are exposed to this type of scam, and there are many problems, including on the board. But we don’t know how many there are, and we hope there will be large dark numbers. It also means that we consider it important to make a principled decision here, says the legal director of the Consumer Council.
Recently, the Minister of Justice, Monica Maeland, sent the new Financial Agreement Law for consideration in the Storting. If the law is passed in its current form, the majority of future fraud victims will have to pay a maximum of NOK 15,000 in compensation. However, a change in the law will not automatically affect cases already in court.(Terms)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and / or our suppliers. We want you to share our cases using a link, which links directly to our pages. Copying or any other use of all or part of the content may only be made with written permission or as permitted by law. For more terms see here.
