Sorry to hear you had this trouble. I'm not a lawyer, but I think you are right. According to the Western Law System, the money did not belong to the customer, so he had no right to send it to you. The bank is required to send the money back to its rightful owner.

Something similar can happen when you buy a used car. If the person who sold you the car is a crook and the car was stolen, it will be returned to its rightful owner by the police. The onus is then on you to try to get compensation from the crook who sold it to you.


When doing a deal with anyone, always try to verify their ID and residential address so you know who they are in case things go wrong. That is also why platforms such as Ebay, Airbnb etc are so useful: the platform will help you and maybe compensate you in cases of fraud like this and the platform should know the identity of all its users.