Suspected Bank Fraud - CIFAS safeguarding?

Gaberdeen

Good Morning, this is a little bit long-winded, but I'll try to summarise as best I can.

My (only) neighbour and I have had an ongoing issue with the Royal Mail for several months now, where our mail (letters etc) never get delivered but amazon packages regularly do - this has resulted in us making complaints, one delivery occurring and then a reversion back to no delivery.

Earlier in the week I was making repeated visits to the Royal Mail depot with my driving license as ID to pick up my letters and was accidentally given a letter for my neighbour in amongst the bundle for my house (We have very similar addresses), which I swiftly dropped off to him as soon as I saw it - he later informed me that it had been for a bank account card with the TSB - he advised that he's never banked with them and found this odd.

Yesterday he went up to the depot himself and found that the pin for the account was amongst the other undelivered letters too. This immediately started alarm bells ringing. On the face of it, it looks like someone has opened a bank account in his name without his permission. Some quick googling showed that this is quite a common fraud tactic and people caught in this position are advised to purchase CIFAS protection as they are likely to be targeted again in the future.

Does anyone have any direct experience with CIFAS? It appears to offer a great deal of peace of mind however I'm unsure of how this would work practically - i.e. will this affect your credit score? Will it make applying for credit harder? etc

Additionally, now that the Police have been involved, he is considering whether the lack of mail service has contributed to this situation at all i.e. letters for him being sat for weeks without being delivered - I doubt there's a way to prove that it was, but surely RM would sit up and take notice if they are dragged into any subsequent investigation by the police?

Any comments / advice / experience welcome

DullGreyGuy

Gaberdeen said:

Good Morning, this is a little bit long-winded, but I'll try to summarise as best I can.

My (only) neighbour and I have had an ongoing issue with the Royal Mail for several months now, where our mail (letters etc) never get delivered but amazon packages regularly do - this has resulted in us making complaints, one delivery occurring and then a reversion back to no delivery.

Earlier in the week I was making repeated visits to the Royal Mail depot with my driving license as ID to pick up my letters and was accidentally given a letter for my neighbour in amongst the bundle for my house (We have very similar addresses), which I swiftly dropped off to him as soon as I saw it - he later informed me that it had been for a bank account card with the TSB - he advised that he's never banked with them and found this odd.

Yesterday he went up to the depot himself and found that the pin for the account was amongst the other undelivered letters too. This immediately started alarm bells ringing. On the face of it, it looks like someone has opened a bank account in his name without his permission. Some quick googling showed that this is quite a common fraud tactic and people caught in this position are advised to purchase CIFAS protection as they are likely to be targeted again in the future.

Does anyone have any direct experience with CIFAS? It appears to offer a great deal of peace of mind however I'm unsure of how this would work practically - i.e. will this affect your credit score? Will it make applying for credit harder? etc

Additionally, now that the Police have been involved, he is considering whether the lack of mail service has contributed to this situation at all i.e. letters for him being sat for weeks without being delivered - I doubt there's a way to prove that it was, but surely RM would sit up and take notice if they are dragged into any subsequent investigation by the police?

Any comments / advice / experience welcome

He should be contacting TSB, it's likely, if they agree it is fraud, that they will offer protective registration with CIFAS anyway and save him £35. 

Credit scores are made up by the marketing teams at the credit reference agencies. No lender asks for them or sees them or uses them in making decisions on credit. If it will impact the made up score? Who knows but also who cares? I'd bet on "no" but never tested. 

Any lender that is a member of CIFAS who process an application will get a warning that the registration is in place and should make further enquiries to ensure the identify of the applicant. Even without protective registration it's likely that TSB will load a victim marker to you anyway which has similar effect but lasts for a shorter timescale. CIFAS do tell lenders that neither should result in an automatic decline but ultimately it's up to the lender. You could probably reasonably expect applications may not always go through instantly if either flag is placed. 

Police won't investigate, it will go to TSB's counter-fraud team who'll hand their file to the police if they identify the perpetrator and there is reasonable prospects of an arrest. I dont see how having your mail held at the local depot has increased the risk of being a victim, possibly just increased the gap between the event and detection however it appears they failed to intercept the card/pin and therefore there may not actually have been any funds drawn etc.