Credit Card Rip-offs At Xmas

John_Pierpoint

Today, I John Pierpoint, was phoned:
"Hullo is that Phillip Pierpoint ?"
- I think you have the wrong number, right surname but we have no Phillip.
"This is xxxxxx-direct (well known retailer who also has a web site) we want to check the order we have received"
- Oh yes, what is the delivery address ?
"It is somewhere in London"
- This is somewhere in Essex.
"Do you have a card ending 4321 ?"
- Hang on I'll check
- Yes ????
"You have not ordered anything from us for delivery to a London address ?
and you don't know a Mr Phillip Pierpoint?"
- No but a penny has dropped - Mrs Pierpoint's initial is "P". Can you tell me the issuing bank.
"No but I can tell you it is a visa/mastercard & its expiry date is mm/yy
Sounds like someone is trying it on - they won't be getting this order".
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I tried doing a 1471 and got "we do not have the caller's number" - this scottish voice could have been a scam.
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Now this card is in my wife's name and I am just a signatory; so I don't need to tell you her mobile was turned off and I had a fiasco of a conversation trying to alert the bank of THEIR danger. ("We must speak to the account holder" Some idiot at British Gas kept repeating that mantra, when I tried to report the death of an elderly aunt and did not want to finance her landlord through the winter!)
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Some 2 hours later Mrs P returned laden with Xmas shopping and we then spent 3 hours reconciling our situation on line and tring to get across the details to a muppet at the call centre, who was reading from a script.
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It seems that a week ago someone ordered an internet DVD rental.
The next day they got bolder and put a three figure sum onto their mobile phone.
The bank refused to let us have details of any transactions in the last few days - they seemed to treat them like cheques going through clearing. So we are now stuck without the credit card until a new number is sent after Xmas. (Fortunately we have an alternative or two).
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With a bit of luck, the thief does not have the card's pin. Most probably the details were captured at some old fashioned shop where they are still taking signatures. This would mean that all the fraudulent transactions are "card not present" and so will be the foolish retailers problem.
Moneysavers, I will keep you posted on how this pans out and then name names of both the savvy and the foolish traders.#

FOR THE MOMENT THE MESSAGE IS "DO NOT LET YOUR CARD OUT OF YOU SIGHT
HOWEVER MUCH YOU ANNOY THE HEAD WAITER".

TTFN

John

PS Come to think of it "XXXXXX-direct" could have asked me if I wanted to play delivery van driver. I think I would have enjoyed putting on my steel toe caps and asking the scumbag to sign for his delivery.........!

watchtheskies

Hi John, I just got stung for £716.23 by someone who got my debit card details from somewhere?, I shred everything, even if its just my address, nothing leaves my house with any kind of information legible.

now my bank blocked the card (but only after the £716 had gone), I only found out when I tried to use the card today!

way to go the Bank for letting me know (NOT)

I only use this card to buy food and stuf from Tesco, and the odd stuff from online, so I have to assume that some scumbag at an online retailer has passed or sold my details to another scumbag (seems to be a lot of them around?)

Frustrating as now my card is blocked 5 days before Christmas.

jenchin66

I had this happen this time last year. your bank should refund your money if you have not shared your pin with anyone. Got my money back within 14 days.

Good luck

John_Pierpoint

Hi Moneysavers,
I think you might be interested in the next episode of the saga of the theft from our credit card account. (Like buying car insurance, you only find out if there is a downside to the service you have bought, when you come to make a claim).

As reported above, the credit card provider just wanted to turn off our existing cards and issue replacements, but we negotiated a short delay to go on-line to check the damage.
Recent transactions were not available, but we could see the fraud starting prior to the weekend: someone, now known affectionately in the family as “Mr Scumbag”, had dealings with a DVD rental company and then a 190 GBP deal with a mobile ‘phone
Company.

On Thursday,(21dec.) I had popped into town to pay a cheque into NATIONWIDE, while in the “Q” , I was distracted from studying my statement by the following oration delivered by what appeared to be the manageress, in the company of her teller “This is not your book, not your signature and not the correct address, THAT IS ATTEMPTED FRAUD, you will be reported to the police. But they made no attempt to detain the youth, who slunk out of the shop (It would seem that the days of wrestling thieves to the floor have passed).

So I arrived home still mulling over a time that I reported a 3K GBP fraud to NATIONWIDE, but the police failed to follow through and I believe the crook is still up to similar tricks. You can imagine my thoughts on getting home and picking up a bundle of Christmas cards and finding the postman had included an invoice.

The time has come to name names, though I will not give the names and addresses used by “Mr Scumbag”, in order to protect the innocent until proven guilty.

The invoice read as follows: ORANGE Darlington Co Durham DL1 4FT.
Tel: 0870 376 5888 Date: 15.12.2006 No: 100397963 Terms: Prepaid ISO Ref:
8490042 (Wot that ??????the quality of the camera ??) Account X-WEB (!!!!!!!!) Customer Order: WE02165119
Despatch Note N0821761143
Item:1 Quantity:1 Description: SAMSUNG E900 PAYG HANDSET (BLT) ……..TOTAL 179.99 GBP

Invoice address: “MR SCUMBAG” Thames gateway development zone north of the estuary.
Delivery address: “MR SCUMBAG” an industrial unit on a trading estate in the marshes in the Thames Gateway, south of the river. (ie miles and hours away)

It is pretty obvious that the 190 on our account must be the fancy mobile plus 10 GBP of calling credit.

I thought I would try and help out ORANGE and possibly get “MR SCUMBAG’S” flashy ‘phone turned off for Xmas; so I phoned the weekday peak rate 0870 number, and after blundering about for some time, pressing various numbers, I got a human:
~ Can you put me through to you accounts department, I want to report a fraud.
“I’ll put you through to Public Relations”
(by this time I was not really ready to have a relationship with anyone and the dialog went quickly down hill)
“we cannot trace anything based on any of those invoice details you have given me;
all you have got to do is get in touch with your bank and they will do a charge back”.
“If you want me to check anything here, I must have your credit card number”
“have you got a crime number ?”
“we have no record of any dealings with the credit card number”
~ I’ve done all that, but you don’t get it do you I’m not the victim, you and your company ORANGE are; you have sold a phone to someone who is not the card holder, delivered valuable goods to an address that is not that of the account holder, all on a “card not present” (Web) transaction.
“we don’t recognise that ‘phone or transaction”
~so you are telling me your warehouse and sales organisation is run by crooks ?
At this point we mutually terminated the call.

I am pleased to say that our “bank’s” economic crime unit was much more sympathetic and we rushed them a copy of the ORANGE non invoice.

There are three more conclusions from this story so far:

1. If you are a scumbag try ORANGE and let us know how easy it is to evade their checks, perhaps Martin in Public Relations on extension 30374 now has a procedure for dealing with fraud.
2. If you are a scumbag, don’t try TESCO DIRECT, their procedures are so good that they even call back the account holder to double check before despatching the goods.
3. This is by far the most important conclusion: When I said ORANGE was the victim, that was not true. WE ALL ARE VICTIMS OF FRAUD AND CORRUPTION, IT IS NOT A VICTIM LESS CRIME. Unfortunately the police and sloppy commercial organisations don’t give fraqud and corruption the attention it deserves. It is an invisible crime, there is nothing macho about catching a fraudster. Consider the snatching of a pensioner’s bag outside the Post Office – I think it is still fair to say that would create a blue flashing lights response and the interviewing of suspects BUT it is hard to say this, the pensioner can grumble at the day centre but is unlikely to be able to take away economic activity, on which we all depend for our future prosperity. Will I be celebrating the hours of hassle that loosing the use of our credit cards over Xmas has caused by getting my next ‘phone from ORANGE? Will a multinational investor read this and think “Thames Estuary” that is the place to create my new headquarters? My senior executives and their spouses (woops political correctness) will really enjoy living next door to the scumbags ? The City of London, pays some very prosperous wages to its employees; it is successful in finance because it is relatively free from fraud and corruption. HOWEVER a hard won reputation of “my word is my bond” is easily lost. Just look around the world. Why are so many African countries dirt poor? Why does an oil rich country like Nigeria have citizens stuck in poverty? Perhaps a citizen of say Botswana can write in and tell us. There is not much point is saving money and improving the lot of your household, if the daily life of the country is under threat from gangsters.

(Coming soon “Mr Scumbag” gets clever – bank gets stupid)

John_Pierpoint

“Scumbag’s” fraud in week 3 continues:

On the afternoon of 21st December, we got a another delivery of Xmas cards plus the replacement credit cards. So a quick verification phone call, a couple of signatures and now we can put it all behind us? Eh NO!

That night we were off to staff the kitchen at Mrs P’s parents for Xmas – advancing years means they are no longer up to organising the family seasonal bash. Filling the car’s tank using the new credit card was successful BUT Mrs P would like to take this opportunity to apologise to on behalf of our “bank”. Perhaps the new card was on fraud watch. Picture the scene: Mrs P has clogged the check-out of an overloaded SAINSBURY’s, with a huge trolley load of goods both necessary and luxury; the queues are back to the centre aisle. Then the credit card bounces! (Fortunately the good old Visa is still available as a back-up and got the benefit of our spending over Christmas).
On reflection, the spending of "Mr Scumbag", plus our own spending, took us over our limit.
On 26th we tentatively tried the new card again at TESCO, to fill the tank for the return journey. Success so problem solved? NO, not yet.

Arriving home late on Wednesday 27th we found a call on the telephone answering machine, from earlier in the day, asking for Mrs P to phone “the bank” - “we are open 24 hours a day”.

So first a quick dekko at the credit card on line: Most of the transaction have arrived, including a surprising number that had to be signed (some traders have not got up to speed with last February’s chip & pin). There is an interesting entry for TMOBILE for
25GBP. It looks as though “Mr SCUMBAG” has got his fancy phone unlocked and fitted with the sim card of another network ?

The call to “the bank’s” night staff is pretty confusing. It would seem that some legitimate transactions are still dribbling in, while someone has been playing “spot the fraud” and identified a 45 GBP payment to SKY. (also one for 4.99 to WILKINSON – I don’t think “Mr SCUMBAG” is the sort of person who buys firelighters).

We are sending an email to the bank, showing our reconciliation of the account and we await further developments…………………will the bank track down “Mr Scumbag” via the SKY connection, or is “SCUMBAG” already now running half a dozen other people’s cards; including YOURS ?

Watch this space.

John_Pierpoint

No further news from "the bank" yet but I'll soon be ready to name more names.

Meanwhile ORANGE & SCUMBAG might like to read THE ECONOMIST for 21sep06. Telecomm companies loose a huge chunk of money to the likes of SCUMBAG; so it is time to try and get clever.

More details to follow.

Epiphone

Very interesting reading. Do keep us up to date.

John_Pierpoint

John_Pierpoint wrote:

No further news from "the bank" yet but I'll soon be ready to name more names.

Meanwhile ORANGE & SCUMBAG might like to read THE ECONOMIST for 21sep06. Telecomm companies loose a huge chunk of money to the likes of SCUMBAG; so it is time to try and get clever.

More details to follow.

This is a message to the managements of ORANGE & SKY taken from the article in the economist:

"Telecoms firms have always suffered heavily from fraud, which is thought to reduce industry revenues by around 5%. But new software that identifies fraudulent callers on mobile networks is helping some operators slash their losses. Telecom Italia's 140 anti-fraud engineers trimmed losses this year to less than 1% by freezing about 30,000 phones a month, says anti-fraud director Fabio Scarpelli.

Such spectacular drops in fraud are more commonplace in the developing world, where mobile operators now investing in the technology. David Ronen, of ECtel, a firm based in Rosh Ha'ayin, Israel, with more than 100 telecoms clients and galloping growth in poor countries, says his firm's software establishes the normal calling patterns of individuals in order to detect tell-tale “weird situations”. For example, if a mobile account opened in Shanghai, and sparingly used for local calls, begins making numerous calls from Beijing to a few numbers in a distant western province, then it is likely that a phone thief is calling
friends back home. "

Perhaps ORANGE & SKY would like to let us moneysavers know what percentage of their revenues are lost through fraud ?

(The article goes on to explain that in USA crooks steal a mobile on account terms and then phone a "developing country" for DAYS at a time. - there is a technique for switching the destination without disconnecting the call.)

If I was the finance director, I think I would be worried, or perhaps they think it is just a mafia sport and would not happen here in the UK ?

John.

John_Pierpoint

As “the bank’s” fraud department slowly grinds on, we have had two “Statements of Fraud” to sign, dated 10 days apart; I thought I would bring you and “Mr Scumbag” up to date with changes in the law.

This week has seen appearances in the media of pundits commenting on the implementation of the new fraud act. (I have appended a link to the blurb for text book and serious students can always “Google” for the full details).

It seems that up to now , what we all instantly recognise as “fraud”, had to be prosecuted under a Theft Act from the 1960’s, more or less BC (before computers) and it was very difficult to tick all the boxes and get a conviction. I well remember the reports of a fraud case about 25 years ago, where the judge threw out the case because the Data Control clerk, giving evidence, “had no cognition of his job”. – which probably meant “this nerd has totally failed to explain to me how the system adds up the numbers”.

So a lot of fraud has been prosecuted under the catch-all crime of “conspiracy”, a concept that probably springs from a medieval society. I know a bit about “conspiracy” as I have been foreman of the jury on a trial the stemmed from a fraud: Three guys from E.London turned up to meet a ship from Nigeria (sorry Nigeria but its true) expecting to buy a big sack of “grass”, unfortunately the sack contained straw. So as well as loosing several thousand GBP, they got banged up for several years each for “Conspiracy…..Cannabis”.
However it requires at least two crooks that are not married to each other to create a conspiracy. So “Mr Scumbag” you are probably safe from that charge unless, you are part of a gang.

One pundit claimed to have found a 1,000,000 GBP fraud and the police said they were too busy. Another had gathered a dossier on the gang crime of staging accidents and then defrauding the victim’s insurance company, but could get no action from the police/crown prosecution service.

Will the new law make a difference? Perhaps once the lawyers have made a fortune defining what it means in high profile court cases – any Daily Mirror pensioners out there? In the meantime, the primary function of the local police will continue to be “keeping the peace”, rather than nailing sneaky little crooks.

There is a little country, with a great deal of democracy, but almost no natural resources, struggling with communications from one mountainous area to another. In less than 200 years it has progressed from almost destitute to very prosperous, by taking money seriously. Perhaps someone Swiss can explain how fraudsters are handled over there.

TTFN John.

Still to come “Scumbag’s” alias and “the bank’s” name & performance.
https://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Law/CriminologyandCriminalJustice/?view=usa&ci=9780199296248.

PS: To be fair to the Mirror group and its pensioners, after years of worry they did at least get some sort of justice, which is more than can be said of the current crop on pensioners let down by their pension funds, with thanks to the BBC web site for the following:

In 1996, after an eight-month trial, Kevin and Ian Maxwell and another man, Larry Trachtenberg, were cleared of conspiracy to defraud Mirror Group pensioners.

In 2001 the Department of Trade and Industry released a report into the Maxwell affair which said "primary responsibility" for the collapse of the Maxwell business empire lay with its founder.

But it added that Kevin Maxwell and some leading City financial institutions also bore a "heavy responsibility" for the company's failure.

After Robert Maxwell's death campaigners for the 30,000 Mirror Group pensioners mounted a three-year campaign for compensation.

Their funds were largely recovered thanks to a £100m government payout and a £276m out-of-court settlement with City institutions and the remnants of Robert Maxwell's media group.

John_Pierpoint

This weekend I went to a celebration down Dover way, so I took a 10 minute diversion to see how easily "Mr Scumbag" had stolen 180 GBP of mobile phone.

My "Collins M25 Master" street map suggested that the phone had been delivered to a trading estate in Northfleet.
Infact there is a finger of raised land making a causeway down to the Thames. Two roads go down from Overcliffe on the chalk to The Shore Wharf. One is Burch and the other is Pier road. These roads are residential and have obviously been there since at least Victorian times. The houses if they were not surrounded by commercial units and if they could be moved 30 miles up stream, would be worth a fortune.

Several properties seemed to be empty, so perhaps "Mr Scumbag" could gain access to empty properties and get deliveries of goods and credit cards ?

However his behaviour will not be doing anything to improve the crime figures credit rating or property values of this area.

If you are interested or worried you might have "Mr Scumbag" as a virtual neighbour put this post code DA11 9NB into this post code finder:

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/

John_Pierpoint

I think this little saga, by now, is just a small accounting entry in the "chargeback" ledger of Egg bank and a slightly more painful entry in Sky's and Orange's bad debts ledger.
I've lost perhaps a day of my life sorting out the mess, and I'm 17GBP down as I managed to mess up a payment to the second string credit card I was forced to use when the Egg one started bouncing over Xmas.

Does scumbag still have the use of his fancy 'phone and Sky box ?

At least I'm not seriously out of pocket, like some of these people:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=4568088#post4568088

Au Revoir,

John.

PS If the new occupant of Flat 50D Pier Road Northfleet DA11 9NB,
possibly named Ahmed Madadi, would like to send me a Private Message, I could help him with his possible case of identity fraud and damaged credit rating ?