Bank customer loses £14,000 after fraudsters used his card to buy AI credits
A Metro Bank customer said "no" to a suspicious payment — but the bank only blocked that one transaction, letting fraudsters drain his account via an AI chatbot subscription.
What happened: Sussex businessman Zoli Rutter had £14,244 taken from his Metro Bank account after fraudsters got hold of the debit card details linked to his Anthropic account, which he used to pay about £15 a month for the Claude chatbot. On 19 June, Metro Bank flagged a £90.90 payment and texted to check it was him. He replied no — but the bank only blocked that single transaction, not his card or account. More payments, mostly £90-£200, kept going through until Metro fully froze the card the next day, by which point over £14,000 had gone missing.
Why it matters: This isn't an isolated glitch. A US-based Claude user reported a similar scam in May, and others have described the same pattern on Reddit: criminals buying AI credits or gift cards with stolen card details. AI subscription billing is emerging as a fraud channel that banks' existing alert systems aren't built to catch quickly, even when a customer actively flags the first bad transaction as fraudulent.
How it works, plainly: Fraudsters obtain someone's saved card details — Anthropic says it found no evidence its own systems were the source — and use them to buy Claude credits in small, repeated charges that don't automatically look catastrophic. A single suspicious payment can be blocked, but unless the card itself is frozen immediately, the same stolen details keep working for further purchases. Metro Bank called it a case of "complex nature" fraud that let payments slip through before the card was fully stopped.
The rollout: After Guardian Money intervened, Metro Bank temporarily refunded Rutter while pursuing a chargeback from Anthropic, which has since refunded him directly and banned the account used in the scam. Metro also offered £300 compensation and says it has changed procedures to block cards faster. Rutter still plans to complain to the Financial Ombudsman. Anthropic says anyone charged fraudulently should contact its support site for a refund; UK rules require banks to refund unauthorised fraud by the next business day.