MSE News: Bogus mobile top-ups could spell greater fraud danger

Lucy1988_2

My partner has just had three 02 top up payments to 02 Slough, within a eight day period. He is on contract with 02 but obviously the contract is a fixed, monthly payment.
He has had 1 payment @ £16.00 (strange as top ups are usually multiples of £5)
1@ £10 and
1@ £15
He is going to be contacting his bank to find out more, but how do they establish that it is fraud and rule out the possiblity of him having two phones on the go? As I am sure there are people that try to claim money back when it is them doing the top ups all along!

chistery

Just had a £30 charge on my current account appear, and a lot of other foreign transactions. Just so happened I did attempt a £10 top up that day, which didn't go through as the daily limit had been reached. I just assumed it was an error. O2 tell me the £30 went through minutes after midnight, allowing them to get the full daily limit.

O2 did say they would cut off the number that was topped up but I doubt it makes any difference to these people.

Still, Nationwide seem to be handling it pretty well so far. Saying I'll have all my money back in 5-10 days.

EileenC_2

I am embarressed and totally shamed to say that I am a victim of this scam too.
It has been going on for just over a year and I didn't notice! Just over a year ago I fell really ill and as a result of a year of aggressive treatment and doped up with heavy duty painkillers I am left disabled with a progressive auto immune disease. For most of the year I have been pretty much 'out of it', being bedridden and housebound with little mobility. The medication had horrible side effects and I also suffered terrible depression so to my regret I didn't have the energy or interest to check my monthly statements - only checked the balance and it seemed ok (ok being not needing my overdraft and having enough to pay the bills)
Not being able to go out much I use the internet to shop and pay bills etc and am always careful about who I buy from - and have passwords set up for internet payments.
I have an o2 pay as you go phone that I top up via the mobile phone usually between £20-£30 per month. As part of my money saving I got rid of my Virgin Cable so don't have a landline.
Anyway - last week I misplaced my debit card, I used it to pay some bills over the internet and can't think what I done with it after that - so after searching for it I phoned the bank (Bank of Scotland) and they cancelled it as a lost card and said they would send a replacement. I logged onto my internet banking to have a look at my recent transactions to see if it would jog my memory and that was when I noticed that there were transactions for prepay o2 in Slough when I knew that the last time I topped up was the 18th June - there were 4 extra payments over 7days. I immediately phoned o2 (free phone number from o2 mobile phone) and spoke to a helpful man who asked me to fax him my bank statements showing the extra payments (obviously with the confidential stuff blacked out), so they could match up the top ups for my phone from their records and identify the unauthorised ones. So ignoring my painkillers I trawled through the rest of my archived statements just in case there were more.......and just sat and cried all night - there has been about £1,400 been taken for o2 payments over the period of a year. I faxed him the statements and he phoned me back saying that it was being passed to the o2 Fraud and Investigation Dept and they will get in touch with me on Mon/Tue (he phoned on a Sat). He said to get in touch with the bank again even though I had a new card being sent it was to alert their fraud dept. So I used all my credit phoning the bank on an 0845 number - I spoke to a nice woman who managed to understand me through the sobbing and said that since I had a new card and the old one was cancelled I just had to watch the account - and she would inform the fraud dept that o2 would be getting in touch and they would probably get in touch with me too. I asked about informing the police and she said they would probably be informed by o2.
So here I am feeling stupid, guilty, angry and really upset and annoyed at myself ......and worried about talking to the Fraud investigators who will probably see me as a stupid old woman who should have known better. Cue the tears again.
Sorry about the long post
Eileen

duggie1982

Eileen, you should not worry as im sure o2 and your bank will sort this out for you. Some people dont see this on their statements until they have something to look for.

I hope this will be resolved soon for you!

evc80

watch out for this on your credit card statements.

I was just done for £50 quid. Aparently is a mobile phone top up charge but I don't have a pay-as-you go phone!

luckily the bank is going to reimburse me!

jamestom_2

Hi Eileen, so sorry to hear about your problems. I have just been scammed for £30. I never check my statements at all (or keep them) so I'm hoping this is the first and only incident. You are not silly, you're like most people. I hope you get all your money back please keep up updated got my fingers crossed for you. I'd rather be a victim than the piece of scum who steals from others. At least you will be vigilant in future and it will never happen again - that's got to be a good thing :-)

DJWanger

Ive just had exactly the same problem £30 from 02 and £20 from tesco mobile. And im on contract with Orange!

This has obviously been going on for too long why isnt something being done?

The bank said they are going to refund the charges to my debit card which is great news.

groovychick1977

This has happened to me too. I returned from holiday this week and there was a letter from the fraud dept of my bank advising me my card may have been compromised. I rang and there was a £20 top up to o2 (Never used o2 in my life) and they asked me if I'd heard of someone/ company with a very strange sounding name who had attempted some transaction of 0.01p. I do use paypal, cover my pin at the cash machine and never use my card at the pump, always use the kiosk. Also I had an e-mail supposedly from my bank thanking me for changing my verified by visa password (which I haven't done!) I am not a happy bunny, plus have got to wait 7 to 10 days for a new card Grrr!:mad:

Kerry_Mc

Had two payments of £15 to O2 Pre Pay leave my account today although I'm not an O2 customer and have authorised no such transactions. Reported it to my card provider who instantly put me through to the fraud department as though they were familiar with the scam and a quick Google search brought up this forum and many others on the same theme. I also sent an email to O2 reporting the incident and asking what they were doing to prevent this long-running scam. Will report back if I get a reply.

EvilGoldfish

Hi all,

I had a payment come out of my account today from '3 - Maidenhead' for £1.95.

When I phoned up to set up an account with 3 on Wednesday, I gave my card details over the phone (16 digits, expiry, and 3 digit code plus registered address) then straight after completely regretted it. I felt a bit dodgy about it and then saw this today.

A rang 3, obviously got put through to an international call centre, which was soooo not helpful. As per usual, the lady I spoke to had her script of what she could say and just could not understand what I was trying to ask her. Finally, she checked to see if 3 had taken any amount from my account and told me they hadn't. Upon hearing this, I told her it seemed I had been scammed and that it was most likely an employee of 3, or someone overheard me whilst I was in my bedroom in my house... (unlikely). I have not used the card since giving the details over, except to withdraw £10 at my local co-op yesterday. However, seems a bit of a coincidence that the reference was a 3 network reference!

After mentioning that I believed it may be an employee of 3, the lady I was speaking to asked to put me on hold so that she could figure out what I should do next. Upon coming back onto the phone, she said "I have just noticed that 3 did take the £1.95 out of your bank account, to do a credit check, I just didn't notice it before". Anyone else see this as extremely suspicious? Cover-up? She thought it was £195 first off, instead of £1.95, how could you 'miss' seeing that?

I have now cancelled my account with 3 and am looking elsewhere as the service was pretty awful (40 mins of the phone for that) and everything just felt weird.