Lloyds TSB Identity Fraud

fallen121

My husband has a Business Credit card which is registered to his office address (he's self employed) but was previously registered to our home address (i.e. before he got his office).

He uses it to buy IT equipment from Dell, HP etc. for clients which can then be delivered to his office address. He can't use personal credit cards for this purprose because a) Dell, HP won't deliver to an address other than what is on the statement so won't send stuff to his office as the statement address for those cards is our house, and b) He's not at the house during the day anyway, he's at the office!

On 31st December someone phoned Lloyds TSB to change the address on the credit card. Apparently they asked "changing the address won't affect my ability to buy things, will it?" so Lloyds flagged the call as suspect BUT DIDN'T CONTACT MY HUSBAND. He only found out about it today when they called his mobile (he was in the shower). When he called back, they initially refused to talk to him because the address was wrong and he "wasn't the account holder"!

The usual pattern had developed. £1 or £2 transactions, followed by small catalogue transactions, followed by a £2000 order with Play.com. The Play.com purchase obviously triggered the fraud phone call.

The thing that worries my husband is that the caller knew both his office address and the previous address the card had been registered to, i.e. the home address. This couldn't be gleaned from an internet transaction, which would concern itself only with billing and delivery addresses, neither of which is the house.

The caller also knew his date of birth, previous transactions on the card etc. Lloyds are suggesting that his statement may have been stolen from the office, but this wouldn't give anyone the previous address on the card or the date or birth. We keep no personal details on PCs, we shred everything, we have virus protection. My husband rarely uses the card in a public place and never in an ATM. Presumably Play.com would have required the last 3 digits on the back of the card. We suspect key logging but none of our other accounts appear to have been affected, also we have Norton internet security, Kasperski etc. although I realise these aren't infallible. We've also stopped using IE for accessing Bank accounts.

Lloyds say my husband failed to have an account security password setup against changing the address, they offered to set one up on the phone and transferred my husband to another operator who was told nothing about the fraud (no details were passed on) but told my husband that a) a password could only be setup in the branch and b) Unless he took out identity protection insurance all details of the fraud would be published with credit reference agencies and might affect his ability to get credit in future. Apparently signing up with an identity protection insurance plan would prevent this from happening. Sounded like blackmail to me!

I told my husband not to accept these pressure sales tactics and to hang up and obtain a £2 credit reference report, get his thumbprint registered (free) so that no-one can take out credit in his name without a thumbprint and keep a very close eye on all his credit cards transactions.

I think Lloyds have failed us miserably here.

Is there anything else we should be doing whilst we wait for the new card to come through and the endless forms which need to be filled out to identify the fraudulent transactions?

fallen121

Examination of our records has revealed that just over a year ago my husband rented a van whilst his business vehicle was off the road. He remembers the transactuion for two reasons:

First of all, the van was clamped for having a tax disk belonging to another vehicle whilst it was in my husband's possession (and the rental company initially wanted my husband to pay the fee to sort it out, even though one of THEIR dishonest employees caused the problem!!). This was a national rental chain BTW, not some tinpot local garage.

Secondly, they took photocopies of the front and back of his Business credit card and his driving licence (showing his home address) and clipped this to a rental agreement showing his Business address and all his telephone numbers. So basically they had two signatures, a date of birth, both addresses, home and business information, credit card, expiry date and 3 digit code - more than enough to convince the credit card company to change the address after having first navigated the automated phone service (which will give you the last few transactions in exchange for a date of birth).

My husband wasn't happy about having all this information held all in one place, but was assured it would be securely destroyed after he returned the vehicle. He only had the company's word that they did this. We already know that their employees were not above swapping tax disks around on vehicles. What else were they capable of doing?

I have been unhappy for a while now about all the information we are routinely expected to provide to just about anyone "because of anti terrorism laws". When things go wrong, as they have obviously done here, we have no right of recourse because there is no proof. The rental company will deny it of course. It so much easier for everyone to point the finger at my husband and blame it on the fact that he buys stuff on the internet - even though most internet transactions don't require unrelated addresses or dates of birth!!

We're still sore at Lloyds that at this time of crisis all they could think about was a sales opportunity for selling identity theft insurance - and to threaten my husband with having his credit rating affected unless he took it out is just plain WRONG. We still can't understand how they could have flagged the change of address call as suspicious and made no attempt to phone for nearly 2 weeks.

:mad: :mad: :mad:

fallen121

Thanks to everyone whose been reading this. Writing about it helps a bit. When this kind of thing happens to you, suddenly nobody wants to have anything to do with you anymore. And that includes everyone on MSE. Because despite all the dozens of you reading this, not one person has posted a reply or sent a PM or anything. It's like no-one cares.

It amuses me a bit that people post on here about all sorts of things like how their marriages are going down the pan, how depressed they are about their life situation and things which really aren't exactly money saving at all and they get DOZENS of replies, suggestions, messages of support. As well as the usual negative comments, questions about whether or not it is a wind up, unhelpful suggestions, outright rudeness. But you know, we haven't even had that.

IDENTITY THEFT IS A VERY REAL THREAT TO EACH AND EVERY MONEYSAVER.

Hopefully, if you follow all the advice on this site, then it will NEVER happen to you. But if (God forbid) it ever does, I assure you you will never feel as isolated, alone and friendless in your life. You will spend endless hours on the phone talking first to automated call answering systems, then to underpaid office juniors who will put you on hold before passing you to supervisors whose will probably not even talk to you before you agree to buy identity theft insurance. EVERYONE will blame YOU. You will spend hours waiting in for police officers who will do little other than take a statement an issue you with an incident number.

Lloyds are trying to blame my husband for all of this, saying that the information must have been gleaned from an internet transaction, or he must have lost his card somewhere.

Conversation with my husband yesterday goes a bit like this:

Fraud department: "Well you must have let someone have access to your card as they seem to know the three digit number on the back"
My husband "Have you never tried to rent a car? They take photocopies of your driving licence and the front and back of your credit card."
Fraud department: "Well you could have gone to another company"
My husband "That is the only rental company in my town. It was arranged by my insurance company. I was initially told I wouldn't need to pay anything. When I get down there, suddenly they need the card 'for insurances purposes'. What was I to do? Without a car I can't work"

My husband also questioned Lloyds about why they didn't contact him for 12 days

My husband: "Why did you wait 12 days to contact me? Why didn't you refuse to change the address until you had confirmed it was me by calling me on the number you already had listed on your records?""
Fraud department: "The man who changed your address knew all your details. He seemed plausible"
My husband: "Plausible enough that you wrote down that he appeared to be suspicious on the record. Then he maxes out the card buying computers, thousands of pounds worth of DVDs and mobile phones and still you don't contact me!"
Fraud department "It is not our policy to contact customers by phone where suspected fraud occurs. We might have been talking to the fraudster"
My husband: "But you called me yesterday to alert me to the fraud!"

And so it goes, on and on. Yesterday my husband went to the car rental place where they told him the previous Manager "had left the company". When he asked about how they go about destroying the photocopies they make of the driving licence and front and back of the credit cards he was told "You must be imagining it. It has never been our policy to photocopy the font and back of credit cards and driving licences. You must be thinking of another company. Please leave the store as you are being rude to the staff. If you have a complaint please take it up with our Head Office".

He told me "If this was the USA and I had a gun, I would shoot someone. This is like a bad movie. Suddenly nobody believes me. Suddenly this is all my fault. I can't work, I can't get credit, my clients want nothing to do with me. Everything I have worked for is gone."

Neither of us have eaten in 2 days.

Did I mention our boiler broke down last night? We have no heating and no hot water. And every plumber we've phoned says they won't touch our British Gas boiler with a bargepole because it's a Combi that needs a computer to analyse it and the parts are as expensive as hell.

We've now been waiting in for the police to arrive for over 4 hours "They don't do appointments" apparently. Nobody gives a !!!!.

stevenj36

Hi fallen121,

That sounds like a real mess. I really hope that everything gets sorted out for you and your husband.

I had a situation with Lloyds TSB in December 07 with their Airmiles CC. It was a new account and I had only used the cards in a couple of places that I had always used in the past with no issues. I noticed that the available credit was really low whilst on holiday so I rang them and they said that there was a transaction for £4800.00 pending. I knew that there was no way it could have been me and told them so but they had to wait until the transaction hit the account before they could do anything.

It turned out to be used at a car auction so I filled in their paperwork and sent it back and they did rectify the account quite quickly. I offered to go to the police but they said it wasn't necessary! I called them back once this had happened to find out more about the transaction but they refused to give me any further information due to Data Protection - surely I was the one whose data needed protecting!

I promptly cancelled the account as the fact that they let such a purchase go though on an account that was a matter of weeks old didn't make me feel terribly secure. I know people don't like to be called too much by their card companies checking transactions but I would of thopught that something of this amout would flag somewhere!

I don't really know enough about banks procedures etc so I tend to look on these boards more for information that may be helpful and, whilst I can't offer any useful advice or help, I do empathise with your situation and I think it's good of you to have taken the time to share your experience so that if anything like that ever happens to someone else they might know what to look out for.

Hope it gets sorted.

S

vet8

I cannot offer anything, but sympathy. I do understand how the banks will blame you, as far as they are concerned everything is the customer's fault and never theirs of course.

Best of luck in getting this sorted a.s.a.p.

Zooxanthelle

I really am sorry to hear about your situation, Identity Theft is one of the biggest crimes around at the moment.
What I must say though, the Identity theft product they were telling you about is quite good. They do a £1 trial for 30 days and you get your credit report and fraud assistance to help sort out your credit rating etc. You can always cancel it straight away.

Good luck with sorting all this out. x

hippey

Lloyds also do the ID theft protection as part of the Premier Account.

On the other hand, they should not be trying to sell you an insurance backed product on the pretence that it will make it all better. There is still the possibility that all this will be registered at the credit reference agencies. The CC bill might well appear on there and a dispute marker, possibly a CIFAS report, but none of these are really a big problem, more like minor irritations.

I would be looking for some goodwill from Lloyds though, and enough to cover those 'out of pocket' expenses you are incuring. (like phone bills etc)

hippey

I forgot to add, the police will not take a report from you anyway, as you are not the victim (Home Office counting rules) the bank is the victim you are a witness.

And quite correct, with regard to Data Protection they will not expose much about how the fraud was committed as will exposes bank weaknesses and possibly comprimise any police investigation. I understand the frustration by all of this, but unfortunatly ID fraud is getting far to common.

fallen121

hippey wrote: »

I forgot to add, the police will not take a report from you anyway, as you are not the victim (Home Office counting rules) the bank is the victim you are a witness.

I understand what you are saying, but what we are taking about here is not a bit of credit card theft but actual identity fraud.

I don't know if you have experienced this yourself, and I don't mean to be rude or to trivalise what you have said in any way, but please don't try and generalise as everyone's experience is bound to be different.

Contrary to what you have said, the police are taking this quite seriously. They phoned us this afternoon to apologise for making us wait in all morning. They are coming round tomorrow to take statements and their exact words were "we expect this to take some time".

We now have reason to believe that the other party is in the process of applying for credit in my husband's name for car finance, also a new passport and driving licence. This is why the police have to be involved.

You may have read in the papers that identity theft is a victimless crime. It isn't.

You mentioned out of pocket expenses such as phone calls and yes you are right, we ought to expect some compensation from Lloyds in this regard, although I expect it will take quite some time and effort to get it. However, if you factor in things like the cost of new passports, driving licences etc. then it is getting quite expensive and the person who is going to have to foot the bill for this is my husband. And no-one will compensate him for that. Plus all the time spent on the phone, waiting in for the police etc. is time my husband should be spending with clients. All the time he isn't working he isn't earning money.

I appreciate the time you took to post, but what you said has basically tried to trivialise what we are going through by saying "you're just a witness". Lloyds won't give my husband a credit card now, so he can't buy equipment for clients. How do you suppose he can run a business if he can't get credit?

Lets_Say_2

fallen121, I can't really offer any help but it does seem a shame that so few other members have sent you messages of support. You are quite right in saying that others come on the forums telling their tales of relationship breakdowns and get loads of support - I've been reading such threads. You are not a 'newbie', unlike me.

I am pleased to hear the police are taking an interest and hope it will, eventually get resolved. And on top of it all, your boiler breaks down. Talking off the top of my head, don't know if 'Corgi' themselves offer to advise which engineers in your area can deal with your boiler? Or contact the manufacturer?

In your 1st post, you mention 'whilst waiting for the new card'. Now you say Lloyds are refusing to issue a card. How long have you been with Lloyds? Is your bank account with them? If I was in this situation I would be chewing my bank manager's ear off. Have you spoken with the most senior person you can in the fraud department? (And keeping a list of all the people you have spoken to). And did you claim compensation/discount/refund from that van hire company for the inconvenience caused when it was clamped because of it's dishonest employee?

Wishing you a speedy resolution to this mess.

fallen121

Lets_Say wrote: »

In your 1st post, you mention 'whilst waiting for the new card'. Now you say Lloyds are refusing to issue a card. How long have you been with Lloyds? Is your bank account with them? If I was in this situation I would be chewing my bank manager's ear off.

You are quite right to spot this. My husband spent 45 minutes on the phone to Lloyds on Sunday afternoon. He was too shocked at the time to take a name of the people he was talking to, but spoke initially to an automated service, then to a customer service person, then to their supervisor, and finally to someone who identified themselves as being in the "fraud department" who went through all the transactions. This same person told him:

1) They would cancel the card
2) They would issue a new card
3) Told him about 5 - 6 transactions (although he couldn't identify which were fraudulent immediately as he wasn't in his office where he keeps the paperwork)
4) That he could setup a phone password for the account over the phone (he didn't know he needed a phone password as he's never called them up before as he opened the account at the Branch - apparently the default is the DOB which is how the fraudster got through security)

This same person then transferred him back to customer services, who told him that he would have to visit the branch to change his password! They also tried to hard sell the identity fraud insurance at that point, threatening him that he might not be able to get credit in the future unless he took it. At that point I advised him to hang up.

First thing Monday morning, my husband presented himself at the Branch, explained the position and met with the Manager, who he said was initially a bit aggressive. After showing him some documentation and explaining the position, the Manager took him into his office and phoned Card Services, who initially refused to talk to my husband "because you might be the fraudster". My husband tried to explain he was coming through on an internal Lloyds line, that the Manager was standing there, and he had identified himself to the Manager.

He was then told:

1) They had cancelled the card
2) Why was he calling? What was the problem?

[At this point my husband got angry and said "I was on the phone to your fraud department for 45 minutes yesterday, don't you have any record of this?" Apparently NO RECORD of the conversation had been made on screen, although I presume a recording of it must exist somewhere. I think the Manager left the room at this point and told my husband "stay as long as you need to"]

He was then told:

3) He hadn't spoken to the Fraud Department at all on Sunday (which is why he is now regretting not having taken down some names, but the poor guy was in shock)
4) There were substantially more than the 5-6 transactions he had been told about
5) There weren't going to issue a new card "because he was the victim of identity fraud"
6) The reason they had waited 12 days to tell him about all the transactions was that they had all been approved through Clicksafe (the fraudster had phoned up and changed the password on that as well) so seemed reasonable and also it "wasn't their policy" to phone customers about transactions, even though the initial change of address had been flagged as suspicious (although they initially tried to deny that was the case).

Basically, my husband is being told different things every time he calls up. Also he recalls being told one thing (you can set a phone password now whilst you are on the phone, you can get a new card, you are speaking to the fraud department etc) and is then told "oh no, you must be mistaken, that isn't what you were told at all, that isn't our policy etc.". Add that to what he went through at the car rental office (where they also told him he was delusional in his recollection of having had his credit card and driving licence photocopied), and you begin to see why he is becoming suicidal.

Lloyds have tapes of all these telephone discussions, but because of "data protection" and general apathy we will never get to hear them and he will never be believed. My husband doesn't know what to believe anymore. All he knows is that due to the incompetence of others, his Business is going down the pan. And every five minutes he is being told "you imagined this" "you are delusional" "we never told you that".

We been with Lloyds for about 20 years now (Business and Personal), but are thinking of moving to the Royal. Having said that, we are still waiting for the Business Banking Manager there to call us back. Although we have had a Business relationship with RBS for about 5 years, that doesn't seem to count for much either!!