Silly mistake resulting in a CIFAS listing helppppp

[joe kane]

Hello

I would like to be really honest. I made a very stupid mistake through sheer frustration and anger. I held got terrible service from a bank resulting in many hours on calls. I made a terrible mistake and altered my phone bill to show I had paid £30 in call costs that were not true.

They have registered this case with CIFAS and now I cannot get absolutely anything including opening any bank accounts.

I wondered if anyone knows any way to get this removed? My only thought was that would be through a technicality.

Its been marked as "First party fraud - (Opening an account or other
facility for a fraudulent purpose or the fraudulent
misuse of an account or facility; or taking out an
insurance policy for a fraudulent purpose or the
fraudulent misuse of an insurance policy and/or
insurance policy documentation)"

This was a complaint about a service issue and not necessarily fraudulent misuse of the account itself.

Any ideas or help would be hugely appreciated.

Joe

[R0b]

I have little sympathy for you and hope that you've learnt your lesson and the impact making fraudulent claims can have.

Just so I'm clear, the CIFAS marker is on your credit file?

Suspect you might have to go to court on this one and I can only see an argument on technicality here because you did commit fraud. As you have mentioned that this related to a complaint about service and not one of the issues described, then you could try and argue that they are in breach of data protection laws on the basis that what has been registered is not accurate nor is it true.

There is a Court of Appeal case, Grace v Blackhorse where the issue relied on Grace being labelled as a default when strictly that wasn't true. The key point that could support your case is this (see my empahsis):

As for the second submission, I have not been persuaded that the shortcomings in the CRAs’ registration systems can excuse a registration which is in substance inaccurate because of an omission (namely that the ‘default’ related to an unenforceable agreement). If an accurate registration cannot be accommodated, then the answer is for the industry to change its registration systems, and in the meantime for inaccurate registrations not to be made.

Think your starting point would be to write to the bank and ask them to remove it on the basis that the marker is factually incorrect, it is causing you harm by not being able to open accounts or obtain credit etc. Give them a timeline and, if you intend to take it to court, then you can say that you will look at starting legal proceedings for breach of data protection and ask the court to award damages and order the removal of the marker. Whilst you may have tried to defraud the bank by inflating your call costs, that doesn't mean the bank can label your credit file with something that doesn't represent the true facts.