Your Input Please Credit card fraud.

[dunover]

OK, here's a weird one.

I don't use credit cards although I have many, as being very creditworthy I'd sign up for them via Quidco or Top Cash Back for the free 30 or 50 quid for opening an account.

About 2.5 years ago I got a Bank Of Scotland one, just stuck it in the back of the wardrobe in a box along with the rest of them. It was NEVER used once online or physically. It has never left the house. I entered it into my secure online banking just after receiving it (this is so I can set direct payment up and pay it directly from my current a/c online if I ever needed or decided to use it.) I never did. I sent 7pence over to it to check I had the details right from my bank so it had a 7pence credit balance from day one.

This was about 32 months ago. Last week I received a text checking some transactions. Thinking it was a bogus text I researched it on the web, was kosher so I rang them up after retrieving the card from the box upstairs, covered in a fine layer of dust so exactly how I left it with the rest of them about 2-3 years earlier.

Some twat had successfully spent 19 dollars in a US western-style clothing online store and then proceeded to spend 598 bucks with some (after research) pyramid selling BS called 'Dubli'.

So I went through the inquisition on the phone, them asking if my small daughter/cat/missus had had access to it and developed a sudden taste for C&W - style clothing. I explained the above, that I had just retrieved it untouched from exactly where it was left years ago, dust 'n all.

I was mystified. It was unused and I didn't get paper statements for it as it had no transactions to generate them. I realized the expiry date was in August so asked if they had sent a replacement early which had been intercepted in transit. No, they hadn't issued the replacement yet. Do I mind if they call in the Police? (standard question from fraud team to make false chargebackers climb down I presume). Not at all, because I'd love to know how an old unused card never receiving statements, never been out of the house or used online had been compromised. I then said, due to my absolute confidence it could not have been abused from my end, that I believe YOU LOT have had some sort of security breach or a bent employee because I can't think of any other explanation.

Anyway, new card with new number received and transactions voided. Me? I'm totally baffled.

 

[goatwack]

Worst part is that somewhere right now some guy is strutting around like some pimped- up cowboy

AND you're still 7p in arrears

 

[dunover]

Worst part is that somewhere right now some guy is strutting around like some pimped- up cowboy

AND you're still 7p in arrears

No, I'm 7p in credit - it's a negative balance owing....

 

[goatwack]

No, I'm 7p in credit - it's a negative balance owing....

See? The whole thing has worked out well for you then!*

*and the fraudster

 

[Vegasbum]

I think you are right. It must have been a breach on their end. Just no other explanation.

 

[Deeplay]

Im with the RBS and twice in 16 months my card has been hacked / cloned ... one time they tracked it to a ATM in Edinburgh Waverly train station the Atm had been tampered with. That was just 7 weeks back. Got all the money refunded but they ran about 50 transactions to the same online shopping site and mobile top ups before it was picked up. They admitted it should have been picked up quicker. Got around 600 refunded both times but had to wait for new card etc. No way around it , it happens even if you never have used your card. I check my statements now daily to make sure I know all the transactions and if I see something I dont recognize Im onto the bank. In the end your covered and will get your money back but its a hassle. Oh and thats why I never sent copies of cards through email for verification purposes and in fact any casino asking data to be sent through email should be ashamed of themselves. Secure online upload is all I will do now.

 

[spoton]

Sounds really weird. Is there any chance the card could have expired or so, so that the bank sent you a new one that a post thief could have taken? I guess there is a slight chance some one could have snapped it by means of bruteforce aswell. I believe valid credit card numbers are made by some kind of algoritm, and then if scammers can use a site with bad security or so to test out thousands of numbers and expiricy dates I guess they may get lucky once in a while.

Thieves can be very clever in their own way. Once I had a guy who stole my ID, and went to the bank in person and empetied my account. I called the bank who refunded it and we agreed they would put a note that I had to show my passport and drivers licence to withdraw in the future. A week or so later it happened at another branch of the same bank. Same kind of correspondence with bank CS again, then it happened a third time at a different branch again. Then the person handling fraud at the bank just told me I had to change bank as they couldn't stop the smooth talking SOB.

 

[RichyJ75]

I've only had one issue of credit card fraud. I moved house and some numpty credit card company sent a part filled application form to my old address. The new residents simply signed it and put a made up date of birth, then sent it off. Somehow the credit card company issued a card and sent it to them. Immediately on receipt they withdrew £200 cash, bought train tickets at the local train station and headed off up to London for a jolly up on the new card.

I only found out about it when rejected for a loan so got my credit record where it was flagged up. Naturally the card, pin, statements and letters were sent to previous address so I had no idea what had gone on. I contacted the card issuer (initially had difficulty due to date of birth security check!) and dealt with their fraud section and had to go to the police for a ref number. I said to the police that it is obvious where the fraudsters live and what is stopping me from going there, only to be warned about I was implying!

Once reported, I heard nothing after. I hope they got the scamming bastards due to the grief it caused me.

Hope you get your issues sorted and that their new tassled c&w clothes are easily flammable, with them wearing it at the time!

 

[Harry_BKK]

Somewhat funny that this is all happening in the UK!!!

Casinos claim the largest amount of scamming syndicates are also coming from the UK!!! (re. the Neteller non-bonus issue)

Coincidence???? I think not. The British seem pretty savvy with scamming techniques

My only problem was as well while living in the UK and i have been to 140+ countries in the world, some really dodgy like Nigeria, Togo, Ivory Coast just to name a few, and never ever did i have a penny fraudulently charged to my cards except in the UK, of all places!!!

It was the simple clerk taking back my hired car at BHX airport who was part of gang, copied the card and while i was flying to China they went happily shopping. Found out the next day when the card got declined at the Crown Plaza Hotel check-in in Shanghai.

 

[fun4all]

Absolute scum, glad you got it sorted Dunover.

It is worrying when banks gleefully issue as many cards as they can, with full contactless capability.

 

[dunover]

See? The whole thing has worked out well for you then!*

*and the fraudster

No, read the OP - the 7p I put on there when setting the online banking up nearly 3 years back. That's what the balance has been since, and still is now they've refunded the scam transactions. It shows as £-0.07 but it's in credit.

There was no new card sent in the post, as I said in the OP - I confirmed that on the phone to them.

The image shows the 2 scam transactions, and then them being refunded a week later.

As for the fraudster, his/her transactions will get charged-back presumably.

As for this Dubli thing, check it out on the web.

 

[goatwack]

No, read the OP - the 7p I put on there when setting the online banking up nearly 3 years back. That's what the balance has been since, and still is now they've refunded the scam transactions. It shows as £-0.07 but it's in credit.

There was no new card sent in the post, as I said in the OP - I confirmed that on the phone to them.

The image shows the 2 scam transactions, and then them being refunded a week later.

As for the fraudster, his/her transactions will get charged-back presumably.

As for this Dubli thing, check it out on the web.

It's ok man.....I've been defrauded myself and there's no actual way of telling how. The moment you give out your personal details with any credit reference check you're basically asking for someone to shaft you.

In your case it appears that some 'rogue' employee took your and several others' details and had a field day. Nothing new, irrespective of whether the card has been used or not. The issuer is to blame here the way I see it.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Somewhat funny that this is all happening in the UK!!!

Casinos claim the largest amount of scamming syndicates are also coming from the UK!!! (re. the Neteller non-bonus issue)

Coincidence???? I think not. The British seem pretty savvy with scamming techniques

My only problem was as well while living in the UK and i have been to 140+ countries in the world, some really dodgy like Nigeria, Togo, Ivory Coast just to name a few, and never ever did i have a penny fraudulently charged to my cards except in the UK, of all places!!!

It was the simple clerk taking back my hired car at BHX airport who was part of gang, copied the card and while i was flying to China they went happily shopping. Found out the next day when the card got declined at the Crown Plaza Hotel check-in in Shanghai.

This illustrates a point I was making at the time, the scammers can scam just the same with any deposit method, and here we have scamming with cards, and a damn sophisticated scam too as it should be impossible to get the details for a card that has never been used online, and never left the house since it was issued.

Had this been a casino instead of some shady pyramid scheme, the casino would have been worrying about Neteller, but been shafted by this card scam. I doubt this is a one off either, this is a novel scam that does not involve any kind of hack on a retail database, skimming of cards, etc. Casinos sometimes disregard their own rigid policy of withdrawing back to the deposit method, insisting that the customer takes a cheque or bank transfer from a card or Neteller deposit. This is EXACTLY the kind of loophole that could enable this scam model to get cash, rather than C&W clothing or subscriptions to a pyramid scheme.

The bank really owes you an explanation as well as a refund, as this is a very serious security flaw, and could not be prevented no matter how careful the card user might be.

 

[Deeplay]

This illustrates a point I was making at the time, the scammers can scam just the same with any deposit method, and here we have scamming with cards, and a damn sophisticated scam too as it should be impossible to get the details for a card that has never been used online, and never left the house since it was issued.

Had this been a casino instead of some shady pyramid scheme, the casino would have been worrying about Neteller, but been shafted by this card scam. I doubt this is a one off either, this is a novel scam that does not involve any kind of hack on a retail database, skimming of cards, etc. Casinos sometimes disregard their own rigid policy of withdrawing back to the deposit method, insisting that the customer takes a cheque or bank transfer from a card or Neteller deposit. This is EXACTLY the kind of loophole that could enable this scam model to get cash, rather than C&W clothing or subscriptions to a pyramid scheme.

The bank really owes you an explanation as well as a refund, as this is a very serious security flaw, and could not be prevented no matter how careful the card user might be.

Thing is they do run in some cases huge amounts of random number generation until they get a match ... sounds impossible I know but there is shit like this that goes on. i remember the old days of password hacking for example when it was just in cgi lists they would run millions of combos until they get a match. More intense with carders but doable unfortunately. So in effect even as in Dunover case a card never sees daylight its still not 100% but granted a rare event and you gotta really luck out to be cause with such a scam.

These people are filth and should be boiled alive ..... I was fucking raving when my card was used and would have gladly strung them up myself. These days I never or rare use my card online rather using ewallets with secondary validation always turned on and passwords which I change at random at a number of times every week.

 

[Harry_BKK]

This illustrates a point I was making at the time, the scammers can scam just the same with any deposit method, and here we have scamming with cards, and a damn sophisticated scam too as it should be impossible to get the details for a card that has never been used online, and never left the house since it was issued.

Had this been a casino instead of some shady pyramid scheme, the casino would have been worrying about Neteller, but been shafted by this card scam. I doubt this is a one off either, this is a novel scam that does not involve any kind of hack on a retail database, skimming of cards, etc. Casinos sometimes disregard their own rigid policy of withdrawing back to the deposit method, insisting that the customer takes a cheque or bank transfer from a card or Neteller deposit. This is EXACTLY the kind of loophole that could enable this scam model to get cash, rather than C&W clothing or subscriptions to a pyramid scheme.

The bank really owes you an explanation as well as a refund, as this is a very serious security flaw, and could not be prevented no matter how careful the card user might be.

Agree, but to scam casinos Neteller is easiest as they can transfer money instantly between accounts.

Syndicates typically buy or have other means to possess a database with stolen/faked identities, open 100's of accounts with 1 casino, claim the welcome SUB and hammer away with the max. possible bet size. Out of those 100's of accounts if a small percentage is hitting big wins, will result in a big profit.

By using Neteller or othet e-wallets they can transfer the money between accounts for deposits and then back to the only real account if they make a withdrawal from a casino. From there it goes to a bank account and beyond that they have endless possibilities.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Agree, but to scam casinos Neteller is easiest as they can transfer money instantly between accounts.

Syndicates typically buy or have other means to possess a database with stolen/faked identities, open 100's of accounts with 1 casino, claim the welcome SUB and hammer away with the max. possible bet size. Out of those 100's of accounts if a small percentage is hitting big wins, will result in a big profit.

By using Neteller or othet e-wallets they can transfer the money between accounts for deposits and then back to the only real account if they make a withdrawal from a casino. From there it goes to a bank account and beyond that they have endless possibilities.

We can transfer money instantly between bank accounts here in the UK, much the same as Neteller and actually FREE. It used to take 3 days, but the "Faster Payment" standard ended this. It can be "up to 2 hours", but for most banks it's instant.

With Neteller, only verified accounts are supposed to have P2P transfers, so scammers should face the same problem of verifying all the Neteller accounts they use. Also, unlike banks, casinos can easily find out from Neteller who the player they are investigating has been sending and receiving money to and from. With credit cards, whilst you can't send money instantly, you don't need to because you have a line of credit with which to play.

Best of all are those Paysafe vouchers. Syndicate members can transfer money between each other, but by using it to buy vouchers for casino deposits, and withdrawing via bank transfer or cheque, the casino cannot see the connections between players, and the banks won't tell casinos who their players are transferring money between.

Neteller was probably the most convenient avenue for syndicates as it had instant P2P transfers when the banks still used the 3 day "clearing" method, and P2P was much easier in the early days when Neteller wasn't so anal about verifying players.

The scammers will simply evolve, but it's innocent players that get screwed because they are being told they are always under suspicion purely because they use Neteller, rather than because of anything they have actually done to arouse this suspicion.

If casinos feel the P2P system within Neteller is still not secure enough, why don't they tackle Neteller about it, or even remove Neteller as an option and make it clear to players why. The loss of customers and reputation should cause Neteller to look again at it's P2P system and take seriously the issue of it being open to misuse by syndicates.

This new card scam should also be a major concern to casinos, as if it's possible to use a brute force crack in order to generate working credit card details, rather than buy C&W clobber or subscribe to pyramid schemes, the scammers could use the bogus card details indirectly, such as connecting them to a sacrificial Neteller account or buying vouchers for deposits. This gets around having to supply an image of the card to the casino, and if it's a casino that reacts to a perceived threat by insisting the player takes a cheque or bank transfer for their first withdrawal rather than being able to withdraw back to the sacrificial Neteller account, the closed loop that protects casinos from money laundering fraud is broken. The scammers will only have to rely on the fraud not being discovered by the bank or legitimate card holder until they have the money out of the casino.

It would be far better for casinos to work WITH the eWallets and maintain the closed loop for deposits and withdrawals, and go back to giving players an incentive for using eWallets to steer them away from riskier credit card deposits. The eWallets like Neteller rely on casino business for their survival, so casinos DO have the power to force Neteller to change their systems so as to prevent syndicates from operating. However, casinos prefer to keep offering Neteller and making it the players' responsibility to jump through hoops and read novels on the website before depositing, and simply confiscating winnings from players who missed a hoop or didn't read the novel right to the end before playing.

 

[spintee]

Somewhat funny that this is all happening in the UK!!!

Casinos claim the largest amount of scamming syndicates are also coming from the UK!!! (re. the Neteller non-bonus issue)

Coincidence???? I think not. The British seem pretty savvy with scamming techniques

My only problem was as well while living in the UK and i have been to 140+ countries in the world, some really dodgy like Nigeria, Togo, Ivory Coast just to name a few, and never ever did i have a penny fraudulently charged to my cards except in the UK, of all places!!!

It was the simple clerk taking back my hired car at BHX airport who was part of gang, copied the card and while i was flying to China they went happily shopping. Found out the next day when the card got declined at the Crown Plaza Hotel check-in in Shanghai.

It may be coming from the U.K but can assure you 95% or more of the dodgy transactions are from Imigrants or being bypassed to the U.K, The Eastern Europeans are bang on the card fraud,

In Dunovers case this is a bent up employee without a doubt, & You guess it I will bet my bottom dollar that all work out of the U.K,

 

[Harry_BKK]

It may be coming from the U.K but can assure you 95% or more of the dodgy transactions are from Imigrants or being bypassed to the U.K, The Eastern Europeans are bang on the card fraud,

In Dunovers case this is a bent up employee without a doubt, & You guess it I will bet my bottom dollar that all work out of the U.K,

Sorry Terry but i think it is too easy to always blame it on immigrants or outsiders.

Immigrants can't just open a bank account and suspicious transactions will raise eyebrows at the banks and investigations will follow. So i wouldn't just always put the blame to them.

Fact is that most casino fraud or attempts to commit fraud is happening from syndicates in the UK and they are using Neteller and Skrill for the absolute majority of their transactions because they can easily shift money around without casinos knowing it.

 

[spintee]

Sorry Terry but i think it is too easy to always blame it on immigrants or outsiders.

Immigrants can't just open a bank account and suspicious transactions will raise eyebrows at the banks and investigations will follow. So i wouldn't just always put the blame to them.

Fact is that most casino fraud or attempts to commit fraud is happening from syndicates in the UK and they are using Neteller and Skrill for the absolute majority of their transactions because they can easily shift money around without casinos knowing it.

I not blaming any one my friend, I got nothing against no one, I just stating the facts here,

took me two seconds to find this, U.K most wanted, I narrowed down to fraud,

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

 

[LHofsdal]

It can also be employees of the issuing bank. That happened to us with our Discover card. We had called and told them that some charges on there were not ours. They shut down that card, refunded the purchases and sent us a new card. Before we even received the new card and activated it, we received a call from Dell computers asking some questions about the 1700 USD laptop we just ordered. I was like we didn't order any laptops. Dell was great in helping us find out who was actually doing this. When I found out it was charged to our Discover card I told them that the card had been cancelled a few weeks ago.

It turned out to be someone who works for Discover in their call center, and what they were doing was making these charges getting the authorization and then posting it to your active card. When I spoke with the fraud department at Discover, they told me that I needed to go to the police and the FBI because this wasn't just fraud because it was over 1700 USD and involving the internet.

Long story short, Discover prosecuted this individual and paid for our tickets to California to testify against this person. They did get caught and we prosecuted but it took almost a year to do this. After we went through this we did have a limit put on the card that nothing over 300 USD can be approved without us calling first and letting them know we are makin the purchase.

It sucks to have deal with this crap, but atleast you are not out any money.

LH

 

[dunover]

Sorry Terry but i think it is too easy to always blame it on immigrants or outsiders.

Immigrants can't just open a bank account and suspicious transactions will raise eyebrows at the banks and investigations will follow. So i wouldn't just always put the blame to them.

Fact is that most casino fraud or attempts to commit fraud is happening from syndicates in the UK and they are using Neteller and Skrill for the absolute majority of their transactions because they can easily shift money around without casinos knowing it.

Unfortunately Spintee is correct - it's not the Anglos that specialize in this sort of crime in the UK.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Sorry Terry but i think it is too easy to always blame it on immigrants or outsiders.

Immigrants can't just open a bank account and suspicious transactions will raise eyebrows at the banks and investigations will follow. So i wouldn't just always put the blame to them.

Fact is that most casino fraud or attempts to commit fraud is happening from syndicates in the UK and they are using Neteller and Skrill for the absolute majority of their transactions because they can easily shift money around without casinos knowing it.

Neteller are more than happy to share such information about "connected players" with casinos, and quite a few people have been caught out because the casino have obtained information from Neteller that the group of players they have been investigating have all been sending money to each other via P2P.

Either casinos don't realise they can ask Neteller for this help, or Neteller have let things slide. Customers are supposed to have a "verified" Neteller account before having access to the P2P facility, so there should be no way to open and operate numerous "unverified" Neteller accounts to commit fraud AND be able to move the money so gained via P2P. If Neteller are now allowing unverified accounts to use P2P, they have let standards slide.

In my experience, Neteller are even more anal about verification than casinos, they go beyond verification documents, they require a linked bank account, and they also want a statement as to the nature of the transactions on the account.

It shouldn't be possible for these syndicates to run amok in Neteller any more than it should be possible with the banking system itself.