Is Great Unspoken Credit Card Fraud Rife now in East London and Elsewhere?

gunsandbanjos

bearcat16 wrote: »

A friend of mine who has worked for the Met for years says card theft and especially card cloning have reached insane levels in the last two years. Mainly perpetrated by Eastern European criminal gangs who operate on an industrial scale.

You don't hear much about it because it's not politically correct to blame a crime wave on Eastern European immigrants, even if that is the truth of the matter.

I wholeheartedly agree with your friend.

bris

You need a pin number to access the petrol pumps, entering the pin means the bank refuse any claims so a bit exaggeration on that one.


Card cloning is rife but it's mostly restricted to online fraud which is still massive but in retail if the pin is used then the retailer is safe and protected by the banks.


So I know card fraud is still huge but can't understand why a retailer would refuse any card when a pin is used, which the merchants insist on now anyway.

Paul_1977

Lived in London for years and never heard of this. Never had anyone had any major fraud on a CC either.

Never had anyone refuse a CC, however I don't use cards AT ALL unless the show is a well known retailer, i.e. Tesco etc. I would never use if off licenses or these independent shops. Always use cash.

20aday

I used to work for a supermarket petrol station in the couple of years before they installed Chip & PIN.

Their Pay at Pump system used to have something underneath that collected cards that had been placed on the "hot list".

For a while we used to have Top Up cards in there; could never understand why-until one day I swiped one of them out of curiosity. Turns out somewhere along the line someone's AllStar card had been cloned and the fraudsters were trying to use that to obtain fuel (luckily it never worked on our systems).

Hell I even had someone present me with a counterfiet card-as soon as he handed it over it was blatantly fake!

eddddy

agarnett wrote: »

Even if it were only a local problem to retailers, the additional loss-covering mark-ups by nationwide retailers would be spread throughout the UK to maintain consistent pricing. I think we are talking big potatoes - by which I mean heavy organised crime - not one East London gang :rotfl:

If a card chip and pin card is used, and the correct PIN is entered the retailer always gets their money.

If it's a fraudulent transaction, the bank bears the loss (although they might claim the cardholder was grossly negligent, and so tell the cardholder to pay).


Banks regard fraud loss as a business expense.

e.g. A bank may see ways of improving security to reduce fraud by £250k per year. But the improved security would cost £300k per year. So it's cheaper for them (and their customers) to let the fraud happen.

agarnett

Interesting observations made since I last logged in - would be interested to see more so please keep them coming.

We are all largely aware of the problem of "non-story" type news never making it to press - my strong view is that it is sloppy journalistic trends that causes it - they wouldn't recognise a new trend in crime until it slapped them in the face via someone else's wet and well-developed kipper. For example this thread if we made it so (I claim no special ability on that score).

I am sensitive to new trends. I have lived in East London quite a few years now so have witnessed many changes first hand at several sounding points on the social scale. I have worked manually in East London with persons of many different motherlands, and I have worked in financial services with diverse colleagues and customers.

I (or my card issuing banks if you like) have also been the target of serious CC identity fraud.

I am however unusual in that although not a journalist I do have a friendly enquiring disposition which means when I make the right noises, people tell me things that they might regret later if they read about them here. So that is why I have not identified the supermarket - I am guessing it isn't particularly relevant.

I also have had long non-business-at-hand conversations with call centre staff in places like Mumbai (because I and some of them find that comparing local i.e. UK v. India ways and lifestyles educates us at both ends of the line) and we've talked about differences in banking practices between for example UK card issuing banks and Indian card issuing banks. I understand that it is not common to receive credit cards in the post in India - they mostly come by special courier and you have to be at the address and identify yourself in person in order to take receipt of a new card.

Contrast that with the common UK practice of daily sending out new and replacement cards and PINs to millions of unsafe unattended postboxes around the country, and the ability even to apply for and get sent out credit cards online so long as you have sufficient info to satisfy whatever security the card provider and "CRA partners" have or do not have in place at the time.

If that security breaks down (and I have many personal examples I could present as evidence - as just one individual punter - of just how it has broken down in the past) then it makes CHIP & PIN totally worthless because the criminals have frequently got possession of both for a period before anyone realises something is wrong.

That's one type of CC fraud, and the cloning example is another. The latest Westfield example I was told about seemingly was not new card and PIN interception, but cloning because the card number recorded electronically at point of sale was different to that on the card used. It was also a situation where the CHIP & PIN machine said that a signature was required.

You also have to realise that as well as the majority of the population of big cities like London not having been born in UK, many cities like London are major tourist hotspots and with foreign visitors come foreign cards and foreign card systems. Many of those card systems result in signatures being required at point of sale in the UK instead of use of PIN, even if in the country of origin, the card is a CHIP & PIN variant. So big outlets with multinational clientele think nothing of the machine telling them to collect a signature instead of relying on a PIN.

Once a transaction steps outside of the CHIP & PIN system, the retail staff have to be extremely sharp on their toes to check several things in order to protect their business, and as we know, retail is generally staffed by cheap labour at all levels. Who are these to be tasked with front line CC fraud defense? And even if they do everything by the book and discover fraud in progress, where is the instant police backup and enforcement? It just doesn't exist so the criminals just give the shop the finger, dump the cards, do a runner and try again another day.

If my own experience in the past 5 years is any reasonable example, I would suggest that as much as 10% of card turnover is fraud. Just as there is no incentive for anyone (not the legitimate cardholder involved, nor the card issuer, nor the retailer duped) to inform police, there is little incentive I think for retailers to collate for public consumption their CC fraud losses (although noted what edddy says about the possibility of retailer reimbursement if they get all their beans in a row and make no security mistakes).

My feeling is that there is a cover up at several levels, and that we the CC using public are just being treated like proverbial mushrooms "for our own good". The government doesn't want to spook the public generally, nor admit internationally to such massive creaming off of our retail economy by organised crime. How much of all personal spending is on cards? 90%? What is it which is fueling the apparent growth in our economy making us number 1 fastest growing in Europe? Is it, in significant part, CC Fraud?

PS Paul_1977 said

Never had anyone refuse a CC, however I don't use cards AT ALL unless the show is a well known retailer, ...

Well next time you might as an experiment try using a CC to buy a significant top up on a major retailer gift card purchase and you might then find yourself in the same situation that led me to start this thread

You lose nothing by trying it and if you can make it work regardless of local policy by your charm as I did, then you can still immediately spend the gift card balance yourself at that retailer !