Posted by Peter Brady on Thu 9th November 2006 at 06:00 AM, Filed in Fraud
Have you ever done anything criminal to fund a spending spree? Most sensible people wouldn’t of course.
So what was going through the mind of the school governor’s wife who has been jailed for spending £3,000 on other people’s credit cards buying things like lingerie, clothes and horse riding equipment! Using card details from two ladies she had met at a school fund raiser the lady in question embarked on the fraud and has paid heavily for it with an eight month jail sentence.
Hertford Magistrates Court said that she had “robbed Peter to pay Paul” when her husband fell ill and she was struggling to pay the mortgage.
Her husband added: “The victims are all people that she knows. To expect to get away with it is beyond me. In a close-knit village like Widford it has caused great consternation. Some people have completely ostracised her. “It’s going to be awful, it’s not going to be a very happy village.”
(Via This is London)
Posted by Peter Brady on Mon 11th September 2006 at 01:27 PM, Filed in Fraud
Phenomenal growth in chip and pin is believed to be bearing fruit in terms of reduced fraud. Of course criminals are developing new and more elaborate ways of stealing cash from cards.
Nonetheless, the irrepressible nature of the chip and pin transformation is gathering a pace with more than 150 chip and PIN card transactions carried out every second.
According to 24dash.com:
“This compares to 125 PIN-verified card payments per second six months ago and 85 per second a year ago, UK payments association APACS said.
Since the formal roll-out of chip and PIN in the UK on 14 February, consumers now use their PIN in 99.8% of all chip and PIN card transactions.
This has led to a £60 million reduction in counterfeit and fraud on lost and stolen cards since 2004.
Retailers have also reported that queuing times have decreased since the introduction of the technology.
Banks and credit card companies have now issued 130 million chip and PIN cards, making up 92% of the 141 million cards currently in circulation.
This represents a two million increase over the last six months and a rise of 23 million since the end of June 2005.
In shops, 87% of tills in the UK are now equipped to deal with chip and PIN technology.”
Copyright Press Association 2006
Posted by Peter Brady on Wed 30th August 2006 at 07:00 AM, Filed in Credit Tips, Fraud
There are over a 100 million debit, credit, and store cards in circulation around the UK. Therefore opportunities for fraud are huge. Chip and Pin is having an impact but fraudsters are beginning to fight back with ever more elaborate scams.
One well known trick is for fraudsters to copy a card when they swipe it through a bespoke card reader. Criminals are then able to reproduce the card. There have been a number of reported cases recently of card readers being fitted to ATM’s in combination with a small camera so that your card cannot only be replicated but used with it’s Personal Identification Number (PIN).
Various initiatives are launched each year to make counterfeiting more difficult but nothing can ever be full proof.
A few simple measures you can take to help prevent fraud are:
1. Never lose sight of your card.
2. Never write your PIN down.
3. If you have trouble memorising your PIN a useful trick can be to create a story around the numbers. Alternatively, you can simply change your PIN to a year in your life that has significance - not your birthday or wedding anniversary!
4. Always make sure no one is watching when you enter your PIN - however difficult or embarrassing it maybe.
5. Always corroborate your receipts with the card statement, then destroy them using a cross shredder.
6. This is easier said than done, but you should always report lost or stolen cards as soon as possible.
Posted by Peter Brady on Fri 7th July 2006 at 09:00 AM, Filed in Fraud
Card not present fraud is fairly self explanatory. It generally occurs when neither the card nor its holder are present at the point of transaction, whether it be by telephone, mail order or internet transactions.
The fraud is perpetrated by utilising fraudulently obtained card details to make a purchase. The most common way for details to be taken are from discarded receipts. As with counterfeit fraud, the legitimate cardholder may not be aware of the fraud until a statement is received.
According to industry insiders “The UK card industry has made available to merchants, an address and card security code checking system, to fight this type of fraud.”
I think the message here is to destroy your receipts, preferably by using a cross shredder or incineration.
Posted by Peter Brady on Thu 6th July 2006 at 09:00 AM, Filed in Fraud
There has been an explosion in counterfeit card fraud in recent years. This predominantly involves the ubiquitous “skimming” or cloning the data contained within a card’s magnetic strip, without the cardholder knowing.
Skimming of a card can take place in a variety of places including ATM’s (make sure the slot you put your card into is not covered by an elevated device), bars (beware the drunken night out - this is an ideal time for your card to be skimmed for obvious reasons) restaurants and petrol stations (where corrupt employees sell on data to criminals). The belief is that the more sophisticated chip and pin cards will wipe out this sort of fraud, but there is already talk of criminals coming up with ever more inventive scams.
It will be interesting to see how this battle of wits pans out in the years to come.
