O2 Stolen Phone, Huge Bill, Why am I Liable?

gjchester

wantmemoney wrote: »

What share of responsibility rest with the customer?

In the case of the sims stolen from the shops:

None there was no end legit customer

wantmemoney wrote: »

In the case of the sim stolen from the house:

All until the SIM/ Phone is reported as stolen.

I'm not sure what you are after here. Don't confuse business to business transactions (if stolen from shop where there is legit retail element) with customer transactions.

B2B the sim cards should not have even been activated as there was no account set up until they went to retail, and if it was fraudulant when they ended up being sold on (to fake customers) then the victim should be covered as it's fraud.

Stolen from home then the customer is liable as they assumed responsibility until reported stolen

Techhead_2

I can't decide if you're just really, really bad at explaining yourself. Or genuinely can't see the difference between theft and fraud.

wantmemoney

Techhead wrote:

I can't decide if you're just really, really bad....the difference between theft and fraud.

possibly......Fraud is basically just another word for lie.

from the article in post #1

A criminal gang who used stolen SIM cards.....

The court heard how a joint City of London Police and O2 investigation found the men using fraudulently obtained bankcards and false utility bills to obtain pay monthly mobile phone contracts in stores across London.

in effect they intentionally lied and used fake documents to obtain the sims and avoid paying for the sims.

They stole them........but that's not important to the point I am trying to make.
I am more interested in how they were used and the legal status of the resulting bills.

To make it really simple lets suppose there were only two sims.

sim A stolen from the shop
sim B stolen from the house

On both sims huge premium rate revenue share bills were run up. Who were responsible for those bills.

In the case of sim A stolen from the shop:
Obviously the crooks but what part if any did O2 play. Should they have shown more 'due diligence' with who they were doing business/billing (premium rate service providers)?

There is no legitimate customer in this case.

---

In the case of sim B stolen from the house:
Obviously the crooks, but what part if any did O2 play. Should they have shown more 'due diligence' with who they were doing business with and whether that business was legitimate?

In the case of sim B:

What share of responsibility rest with the customer (real 'owner' of the sim)?

Would a court decide the customer should bare all financial responsibility?
Would the Network Terms and Conditions stand up in this type of case?

eranou

wantmemoney wrote: »

possibly......Fraud is basically just another word for lie.

from the article in post #1

in effect they intentionally lied and used fake documents to obtain the sims and avoid paying for the sims.

They stole them........but that's not important to the point I am trying to make.
I am more interested in how they were used and the legal status of the resulting bills.

To make it really simple lets suppose there were only two sims.

sim A stolen from the shop
sim B stolen from the house

On both sims huge premium rate revenue share bills were run up. Who were responsible for those bills.

In the case of sim A stolen from the shop:
Obviously the crooks but what part if any did O2 play. Should they have shown more 'due diligence' with who they were doing business?

There is no legitimate customer in this case.

---

In the case of sim B stolen from the house:
Obviously the crooks, but what part if any did O2 play. Should they have shown more 'due diligence' with who they were doing business with and whether that business was legitimate?

In the case of sim B:

What share of responsibility rest with the customer (real 'owner' of the sim)?

Would a court decide the customer should bare all financial responsibility?
Would the Network Terms and Conditions stand up in this type of case?

This is a very non standard situation however I would think that a court could either rule that the customer is liable to pay O2 and then claim their losses from the fraudsters or they would rule that O2 would wipe all charges affected by this and claim their losses from the fraudsters.

In anycase how much more "due dilegence" do you think O2 could have shown in this situation?

Techhead_2

You can't just re-define the words theft, stole and fraud in order to put forward a theoretical circumstance.

Jon_01

In the case of sim A; All mobile store's comply with due diligence by checking the proof of id their given with the credit scoring agency's and should be checking that the documents they're given are not forged or altered. In most cases Network owned stores do.
The problem comes with third party dealers who are more interested in commission then doing a proper check. These are an ongoing problem for fraud depts of all the network.

The major problem is people not disposing of things like bank statements in the right way. If people just drop them in their bins there's a chance that they'll be taken and used. I spoke to people who have thrown away cc bills and statements, phone bill, bank statements etc all in a bundle together (they admit this) and then wonder why a month later they've got mobile contacts taken out in their name?
Of course its the networks fault for not doing more checking ! Hard to see how much checking can be done when someone's dropped their life into the bin ?

wantmemoney

Jon_01 wrote:

In the case of sim A; All mobile store's comply with due diligence by checking the proof of id their given with the credit scoring agency's and should be checking that the documents they're given are not forged or altered.

I was really referring to any Due Diligence the Network Operators and Carriers might carry out with these premium rate companies.
This for type of thing for example.

http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk/upload/COLPNetwork06.pdf

eranou wrote:

This is a very non standard situation however I would think that a court could either rule that the customer is liable to pay O2 and then claim their losses from the fraudsters or they would rule that O2 would wipe all charges affected by this and claim their losses from the fraudsters.

I'm guessing that but has Jon 01 pointed out the sim b example is also subject to a customer contract.

Also I wonder just how much of this is in fact being committed by serial 'premium rate' criminals.

stolen phones huge bills international
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1024&bih=653&q=stolen+phones+huge+bills+international&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

About 2,690,000 results (0.24 seconds)

eranou

wantmemoney wrote: »

I was really referring to any Due Diligence the Network Operators and Carriers might carry out with these premium rate companies.
This for type of thing for example.

http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk/upload/COLPNetwork06.pdf

I'm guessing that but has Jon 01 pointed out the sim b example is also subject to a customer contract.

Also I wonder just how much of this is in fact being committed by serial 'premium rate' criminals.

stolen phones huge bills international
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1024&bih=653&q=stolen+phones+huge+bills+international&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

About 2,690,000 results (0.24 seconds)

So do you think that o2 did not show due diligence in this situation?

From what I can see they have, I cant see anything on that PDF you posted that says they havent.

wantmemoney

eranou wrote:

From what I can see they have, I cant see anything on that PDF you posted that says they havent.

link to and show examples of any evidence of 'due diligence' that o2 or any network has undertaken to protect their customers accounts from fraudulent billing and thefts.

Jon_01

When a premium rate number is set up 'due diligence' is (or should be) performed by the company setting it up.
It the people setting up the number have cleared this process (using whatever means), none of the networks can do anything about it. They are bound to carry the traffic. What does happen (and I assume happened in this case) is that something flagged up in the monitoring and fraud systems that caused them to take a look at the mobile numbers that were calling this 'service'. Once this activity has been flagged its fairly simple to see what's going on. I'd think that the revenue from these number would have been held back after they detected what was going on, so the figures quoted may not be all the fund that were paid, merely what was logged. . .