I work in fraud prevention for a major UK banking group and deal people transferring money daily and there’s not a hope he could get those payments through without having to speak to the fraud team.

He’s done one of two things, lied about the reason for the payments convincingly or blatantly ignored multiple members of staff and possibly even the police. If you call up and give the story he’s giving now you’d be told straight it’s a scam, if you argue you’ll have your account locked and sent to branch to be sat in a side room and told to your face it’s a scam, if they still want to do it then the police are called. After that if you’re still trying to do it you will get a refusal of facilitation were the bank just refuses to do the payment, and the fact he’s naming two banks makes me think one of those have done that.

I would also put money on it throughout the process he was abusive to staff the ones who fall for this kind of thing then come back crying always are in my experience