Barclaycard fraud - happened to you?

Gang in £3.5m credit fraud is jailed (part 2)


Benedict Moore-Bridger
16.04.09

FOUR fraudsters who helped run a global credit card cloning operation that amassed £3.5million in a week have been jailed for a total of 18 years.
Police found stolen passports, fake cards, lists of credit card numbers and hi-tech counterfeiting equipment when they stormed a two-bedroom council flat in Walworth, south London. The search unearthed a "treasure-trove" of designer goods and diamond jewellery, The Old Bailey heard.
The conmen struck as Barclaycard announced its £35million takeover of the Morgan Stanley card business last year. They defrauded owners of 2,000 accounts across 27 countries between 28 September and 8 October while the security system was not operating effectively, the court heard.
The gang members, all Chinese nationals who live in the flat, tried to blame each other.
Khi-San Voong, 46, who was receiving housing benefit but drove a 7-series BMW and had a £2,000 Rolex watch, claimed he had no idea the fraud was happening. He was jailed for five years. His girlfriend Qiu Yeu, 46, and another man Qiang Xue, 34, were each jailed for four-and-a-half years. Xue's girlfriend Cai Caixa, 27, was jailed for four years.
Illegal immigrants Yeu, Xue and Caixa are set to be deported when they have served their sentences.
Voong, Yeu and Xue each denied conspiracy to defraud but were convicted. Caixa admitted her role on the first day of the trial.

snoringunicorn wrote: »

Almost a week now, and still no dispute forms, so that spurred me on to finish the letter. I had some advice on the format for this, so here is the basics of what I wrote in the hope it might be of some use if you need to make your own plight known to Barclaycard.....

Barclaycard
Customer Relations Department,
Barclaycard House,
PO Box 5592,
Northampton,
NN4 1ZY

Dear Sirs,

Credit Card Fraud on Account *****
Migrated from Morgan Stanley Account *****

I wish to complain about the way that my report of fraud on my account has been handled, and also to request a full explanation of how the fraud was able to occur on an account that had supposedly been cancelled, when you took over the handling of all Morgan Stanley accounts as of September 22nd 2008.

On ***** I made several small purchases online The last purchase I made was declined, and since I could think of no reason for this, I logged into my new *online* statement at your website. To my horror, I found that the purchase had been declined because my card was only four pounds short of my credit limit. I knew that the balance originally transferred from Morgan Stanley was only **** and any purchases I had made were nothing like this figure. When I saw the transactions on the account, it was obvious that fraud has occurred, with ***** being charged to my account from *****. At no time had my Barclaycard been accessed by anyone else, and I had destroyed my old Morgan Stanley card, (as instructed) back in September. I immediately called your lost/stolen cards line to find out how to deal with this, and spoke to a member of your call centre staff. I had to explain my problem to her several times because she did not seem to be listening and asked me the same questions repeatedly – in fact I was told that she could not see any unauthorised spending on my account. **** (Explanation of what happened) A new card was promised, but no further action was suggested. I had to ask to speak to someone about Fraud, and was then given yet another call centre number to call.

When I called the second number, and went through the call procedure, no one picked up the phone. I called yet again, and spoke to ***, who told me that he would investigate the fraud, and would send out a set of dispute forms for me to complete. Incidentally, when I asked which transaction could possibly have been responsible for my card details being taken, he told me that all the transactions were being made via my old Morgan Stanley card,****(what happened) Even though I was feeling very shocked at the whole occurrence, I asked how it was possible for a cancelled card that had been destroyed to be authorised by Barclaycard weeks after the cancellation date. He didn’t want to expand on this point.
The whole experience was very unsatisfactory, and left me with many unanswered questions. I could do little at the time however, so decided to check out some of the unauthorised transactions. I spoke to ***** (what happened) Later that day, I phoned Barclaycard again, to let you know the information I had been given, but was not even given the opportunity to discuss the issue at all with your call centre staff. This time, they were less than disinterested, and I was interrupted before I could say anything: I was just told to “wait for the dispute forms - **** (what happened next)
Since then, I have decided it is pointless speaking to Barclaycard. Your customer service is **** (subjective words ).

The second and more important part of my complaint is simple. Why, and how, could your company have allowed such a huge, huge blunder to have happened. In good faith, and in accordance with your own literature, I did not use my Morgan Stanley card after September 22nd and completely destroyed it. I take card security seriously, and so ***** (how the card was kept secure); To recap: I have done nothing wrong, at all times my card, PIN and details were kept safe, and secure. How the fraud occurred I shall probably never know, and I suspect that I only found out that the charge were made to my old Morgan Stanley card by accident. However, the fact remains – BARCLAYCARD permitted the actions by not cancelling the card, and by allowing the payments on a defunct card to be charged to my account.

I expected a very much higher level of service from your company: ****(Subjective thoughts on what I think about Barclaycard!) should never have happened, and in the meantime have no use of a credit card because my credit limit has been reached. I would like a full, and clear response on all these points, and also full credit to my account within the next two weeks.

Yours faithfully

I pity the poor person at BC who has to read through your letter. Its longer than War and Peace. Keep to the point and keep the emotions out of it. I work in complaints and deal with hundreds a week and quite frankly if I were the receiver of your correspondance I would either put it to one side in the hope it would disappear or put it into my file 13 folder.

AHAR wrote: »

Wouldn't it be a good idea if you could log in to your online account management and set an option to say your card won't be used abroad? I don't know why the card companies don't introduce this. It'd be their own money they'd be saving...

Err.. no .. the credit card companies don't lose any money. They simply charge back the fraudulent transactions to the vendor. It is the vendor who loses out in the end - or rather it is you and I who ultimately lose out when the vendors raise their prices

On an aside - In the case of fraudent airline ticket purchases I wouldn't have thought the Airline loses out. Usually the scamster pretends to be a travel agent and buys the tickets using stolen card details. He/she then sells them on (for cash ) as a hugely discounted "bargain" to poor mugs. The Airline simply cancels the tickets and the poor mugs are in for a world of hurt when they turn up for their flight. The scamster has of course long vanished into the sunset.

The cc companies already have security measures for overseas transactions. I fell afoul of this as both my cards got blocked when I attempted to use them at ATMs overseas. It is difficult to find the right balance between safeguarding cardholders against fraud and severly inconveniencing them.

My son is working in the USA at present however he still has a UK bank account and credit cards, including a Tesco Platinum card which he uses to pay for things like his skiing holiday in Europe etc.

A statement arrived yesterday from the Tesco card with a booking for his chalet next spring registered and paid for and a series of other transactions all of which appear to be scams. There are several transactions from CCBILLEU based in Valetta - which has billed three amounts onto his card in the last month - and appears all over the web used by scammers to make purchases with stolen cards.

The thing is my son's credit card is here in his desk in his bedroom and so could not have been stolen. he does all his banking and payments on line.

Tesco claim on their form that theirs is the safest cards. I wonder about this. I have a Barclaycard and get an automated message if there are any non standard transactions on my card - but there has been no call from Tesco (which is registered here at his UK home address).

Also this particular scammer seems to have been operating out of Malta using CCBILLEU for some time.

I have passed the information on to my son. Meanwhile has anyone got any further information on Tesco credit cards being hacked or this CCBILLEU hack?