A Sussex businessman has been fighting to recover more than £14,000 fraudulently withdrawn from his Metro Bank account in what represents another incident of fraud linked to Anthropic’s Claude AI platform. The customer, who had been using Claude for several months to analyze business invoices, discovered unauthorized transactions when the bank initially detected a suspicious charge of £90.90 in mid-June and requested confirmation of its legitimacy.
When the customer notified the bank that he had not authorized the transaction, the institution indicated his account would be frozen. However, only the flagged transaction was blocked rather than the entire account, allowing fraudsters to continue making additional purchases ranging from £90 to £200 to buy credits for the Claude platform. Although Metro Bank eventually froze the card the following day, over £14,000 in payments had already been processed. A bank representative attributed the continued processing to the complex nature of the fraud, stating that some payments went through before the card could be fully blocked.
Following media inquiries, Metro Bank provided a temporary refund while pursuing a chargeback dispute with Anthropic. The bank subsequently issued a £300 compensation payment and stated it has implemented measures to accelerate card blocking procedures. Anthropic confirmed that an organized group had used the customer’s card details to purchase platform credits and stated there was no evidence the compromised information originated from its systems. The company has since refunded the customer and removed the fraudulent user account.
This incident joins a growing pattern of fraud connected to Claude usage, with previous cases reported involving unauthorized purchase of gift cards in the US and discussions on social media platforms. The case also emerged amid broader attention to Claude, including regulatory interest from the Financial Conduct Authority and revelations that some user conversations were inadvertently made publicly accessible. The customer indicated plans to lodge a formal complaint with the Financial Ombudsman Service regarding the handling of the matter.
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