Bizarre fraud attempt

dan.pool

Hi there fellow Money Savers,

I got home from work today to find that my wife had accepted delivery of a shiny new laptop. The thing is, though we'd paid for it we certainly hadn't ordered it. It seems that our backup John Lewis Partnership Card has been cloned :mad: and the cloner went on a short shopping spree at Curries.

Phoned both John Lewis and Curries and everything seems to be sorted out, card blocked and new one on the way, refund organised. Only I can't help wondering if I've been victim to either the worlds worst fraudster or whether this is the beginning of some far more elaborate fraud attempt (yes, I can be that paranoid).

Is it possible to defraud someone further by getting them to go through the new card process ... about all I can think of is that an attempt could be made to intercept the card in the post ... but if you have the cloned details why would that be necessary.

~Dan

kev.s

dont they normally do a test purchase to see if the card is stil active, although it normally is a wee purchase initially.....strange

bengalknights

Count yourself lucky as kev.s says usually its a small purchase like a pack of fags etc to make sure the cards working.

aarrgghh

I had one clone. The first thing they got was a rail ticket, apparently they are very poor on security, then DVDs at HMV, then Littlewoods. What alerted the credit card company was the airline tickets. No, I hadn't been sloppy and let my card get cloned. It seems they random generate numbers until they get a hit, hence the rail ticket.

cse

It's the start of a more elaborate fraud attempt. Don't be surprised if someone official-looking turns up at your door claiming that a laptop has been delivered to you in error and offering to take it back... they're hoping that you won't have noticed the fraudulent charge on your account, but will definitely have noticed the laptop that you didn't order being delivered to your house, and accept their explanation that it was an error and they need to take it off your hands... remain vigilant and only deal with John Lewis/Currys directly

INT1

It has been known for the fraudster to either:

Wait outside your house and intercept deliveries
As posted above, knock on your door and have the balls to ask for the item delivered

When the fraudster places the order, he is emailed the tracking number and can track where the package is, just be cautious.

KingElvis

Yep it's common for people to hang round the door waiting for deliveries which are purchased through fraud. Don't let that laptop out of your sight.

Tixy

Keep an eye out for that new card arriving as well, is your letterbox secure? - had it been a bank card might have been worth getting it sent to your branch so you could collect it in person, but that might be more difficult with a store card.

serious_saver

There are many websites that (for the first purchase on registering) will only send to the billing address. Perhaps they hoped to quickly purchase items off your card once the laptop had been shipped.

It does seem a bit strange though. As some others have mentioned there is usually a cautious test purchase first. When my father's card was cloned (many years ago before most people became aware of cloning) it was discovered because they tried to use the card in Sainsbury's at the same time my father was at a different Sainsbury's in the town. It flagged up with the supermarket who contacted the bank. They had bought what appeared to be a very typical weekly shop!

omen666

Ordering from Currys online they will only send high priced value items to your billing address, so a bit sus that they have your address??? Would suggest looking closer to home. Any children?

cse

omen666 wrote: »

Ordering from Currys online they will only send high priced value items to your billing address, so a bit sus that they have your address??? Would suggest looking closer to home. Any children?

You'd be surprised how easy it is to get someone's address - intercept mail, search through bins, pick up a laptop that a bank employee/MP has left on a train, use a phishing email/phone call, look it up on Facebook if privacy settings aren't as tight as they could be... there's certainly nothing to suggest that a family member was involved in this case, or the vast majority of any of the other very similar cases like this