Reports of frauds, deceptions and scams keep appearing, weekly even daily, on
major news channels and newspapers. Some of these frauds seem just too big and remote to be of immediate, direct relevance to our daily lives. But, we will eventually pay for the consequences and damages, in taxes, costs of goods and services, regulations, copy-cats etc.

I hope we can collect, in one thread, frauds and scams, reported or heard. We must become more aware and more educated to guard against frauds and scams
which impact upon the health, well being, and wealth of ourselves and our families.

I've been out of the construction industry a few years now but I seem to recognise this scheme - not sure if they've changed the name of it.

To be a member of scheme the government proposed 3 years ago they wanted 3% of the companies turnover as a fee to cover their overheads.

As you can imagine the scheme didn't get much support.

CC :-)

"... the government ... wanted 3% of the companies turnover as a fee ..."

sounds like

"... the credit card company ... charges 3% of the transaction as a fee ..."

"Call center staff 'sold ID data'

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- London police were investigating a newspaper claim on Thursday that confidential details of British bank accounts are being sold by criminals from Indian call centers.

The Sun said it had bought bank details of 1,000 Britons for just 3 ($5.50) each from a computer expert in Delhi who said he had obtained the information from contacts working in call centers.

...

The paper said its reporter had obtained addresses, passwords, phone numbers and details of credit cards, passports and driving licenses which could be used to raid unsuspecting victim's accounts.

...

The Sun said the institutions targeted included many of Britain's top banks such as HSBC, Barclays, and Lloyds TSB. It added the call center worker claimed he could provide 200,000 account details a month -- including those of U.S. citizens.

..."

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/06/23/call.center.probe.reut/index.html

" Companies House failing to combat ID fraud
by Susie Hughes at 08:05 22/06/05 (News on Business)
The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has lodged a formal complaint about the ability of Companies House to combat corporate identity fraud.
In the letter to the Registrar of Companies, FSB National Chairman Carol Undy warns that a growing number of small businesses are falling victim to the corporate version of identity theft.

As previously reported on Shout99, the crimes follow a similar pattern. Gangs 'hijack' details of registered companies by filling in fake documents with Companies House. They then impersonate the companies, using their details to order goods. The first thing the genuine business owner normally knows about it is when the bills for the goods land on their doorstep.

Following pressure from the Metropolitan Police, Companies House has introduced electronic filing and email alerts to notify companies about the receipt of documents, but the FSB believes that the system is still fundamentally flawed. (See: Protect your company's ID - Shout99, June 2005)

..."

http://www.shout99.com/contractors/showarticle.pl?id=33431&n=250

Mr Blunkett, are you laughing at us?

Surely he must be!

He must be having a right laugh at us for us daring to have our criticism on him spending our money on a train ticket for his 'alleged girl friend' and fast tracking her visa application!

He's had a leisurely rest, pocketed 18,000 compensation for loss of office because he was a naughty boy and had to resign from office becaus of the dishonourable thing he had done, but is now is back doing the thing he was not able to do before, namely act as a goverment cabinet minister, and doesn't even have to repay his compensation.

Oh, and I'm sure you might have read too, how when he lost office, he didn't even have to move out of his 'grace and favour' London home!

Sheesh! Bloody politicians!

From http://news.scotsman.com/....

Pressure on Blunkett to give back his 18,000

JAMES KIRKUP
POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

DAVID Blunkett was last night under pressure to return an 18,000 pay-off he received upon leaving the Cabinet in December, only to return to government last month.

Mr Blunkett, now the work and pensions secretary, was not the only Labour minister to benefit from the rules on retirement payments and then return to the government payroll.

The furore over the severance payments, to which all departing ministers are legally entitled, yesterday put Downing Street on the back foot.

Beverley Hughes, who was appointed children's minister last month, quit as immigration minister last April. Based on her time on her old ministerial salary, she was therefore entitled to almost 9,500 in severance.

Other official figures from the Cabinet Office suggested that Alan Milburn, a close ally of Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, would have been entitled to more than 35,000 in taxpayers' money over the past two years.

In June 2003 Mr Milburn resigned as health secretary for personal reasons, which gave him the option to receive about 17,800 in severance. He returned to the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster last September only to quit again after the general election in May. The second resignation entitled him to 18,275.

The payments to ministers leaving the government derive from a 1991 law passed by John Major's Conservative government. It also compensates MPs who lose their seats. The severance payments were unearthed by Norman Baker, a Liberal Democrat MP who called the pay-outs to returning ministers "grotesque" and said Mr Blunkett should return the money concerned.

The Conservatives also attacked the pay-offs. Chris Grayling, the shadow leader of the House of Commons, accused Labour of abusing ministerial rules.

"This wouldn't be allowed in a commercial company, and shouldn't be allowed in government," he said. "When the last Conservative government introduced these redundancy payments for ministers, they were intended for those who actually left government, not for those taking a break and coming back again soon after."

A spokeswoman for Mr Blair yesterday failed to back Mr Blunkett.

"The rules and regulations apply to all members of parliament as well as to ministers," she said. But while the spokeswoman said she was not aware of any plans to review the rules, she was non-committal on whether Mr Blunkett should to keep the payment despite his rapid return to public office.

It was "up to individual members" whether they chose to accept the retirement payments, she said.

Mr Blunkett and his aides are understood to be furious that the Liberal Democrats have raised the issue of severance packages. The pay-off was justified to cover a "modest period of readjustment" following Mr Blunkett's departure from government, his office said.

"A plumber caught on camera relieving himself in a customer's loft has been fined 3,778 and ordered to do 150 hours community service.

Roy Williams, 46, from East Grinstead, Sussex, was captured urinating into a vase before pouring it into the water tank at a house in Leatherhead, Surrey.

...

He was also convicted of attempted deception after charging 173 for replacing valves that were not faulty.

...

Steve Playle, the Trading Standards officer who led the sting said Williams was among 25% of home maintenance traders "whose only aim is to rip customers off" and said he was very pleased with the conviction.
"

Plumber fined for taking a leak

Olympic London 2012 Lottery Scratch Cards -- So how much goes to the olympic Fund and how much goes elsewhere ??? Well if you buy an olympic Scratch card some 28 p goes to the olympic Fund and 12p on every ticket is collected by Gordon Brown-- another stealth Tax, and where does the rest go ?? are you going to be ripped off again ?? If you are a London Council Tax Payer you certainly will be.

Dianne Thompson, chief executive of the Lottery operator Camelot, said that 28p in every pound will go to the Olympic Lottery Distribution Fund.

This is the body of an email i got today -i have never been to spain or a spanish restuarant etc etc its looks dodgy to me ...

Dear customer!

Your bank transaction number 3051770 (order number 9904716)
dating 30 July 2005 with total amount of 294.00 pounds
has been processed.

Your new account has been successfully created with the following details:

Login Name: ExeterCity
Password: 7982598

Please logon now in http://spanisheshop.com

If you have any problems or queries about logging in or your account,
please do not hesitate to contact our sales team by emailing
support@spanisheshop.com

Regards.

SpanisheShop Team.

I'm sure it is dodgy, fulhamken, if you hover your cursor over the link you will probably see that the address in the bottom left hand corner of the screen is different to the link address shown, and if you click it you will no doubt find that any password/combination will work, and that you will be taken to a screen confirming your credit card details including PIN number...

I have come across what I consider to be more of an annoyance than anything else.at Debenhams,they no longer ask for your Nectar card at the point of sale. At Sainsburys or at BP garages at the tills they always say "have you got a nectar card sir" Debenhams staff have been told not to ask for the card and only put the points on if the card is offered.This is not a very good service by Debenhams either they are in the nectar program or they are not,they should not pretend to offer something they don't.
So if any of you out there collect Nectar points,watch out when shopping at Debenhams.

From http://www.timesonline.co.uk/....

August 05, 2005
Cash machine fraudsters caught
By Simon de Bruxelles

An East European gang stole more than 200,000 using a scam expected to cost banks more than 100 million this year

AN EAST European gang face jail after stealing more than 200,000 in a cash machine cloning scam that police fear is costing Britains banks at least 1 million a week.
The three Romanians and one Chechen asylum-seeker were arrested at a hotel in South Wales, where they had built a device designed to fit over the fascia of a cash dispenser outside a Cardiff supermarket. The device included a skimmer, which copied the information on the cards magnetic strip, and a tiny camera that transmitted a moving image of the customer s PIN being entered on the keypad.

Dozens of similar scams have been recorded in recent months from Bristol to Tyneside, conducted mainly by East Europeans. According to the Association for Payment Clearing Services, cloning cost 61 million last year, an 85 per cent increase on the previous year, making it Britains fastest-growing serious crime.

This year the figure is expected to exceed 100 million.

Police in Cardiff had a lucky break when they were alerted by a hotel manager who suspected that four of his guests were involved in a big drugs deal.

A spokesman for the Cathedral Hotel, where the men were arrested, said: Usually when people stay for the weekend they unpack, change and go out for the night. These four men were coming in then going straight back out.

Instead of drugs, officers who searched the mens rooms found the components of fake cash machines and two laptop computers that contained card and PIN details of 129 accounts, mainly from Essex, East London and South Wales.

DC Paul Giess, the investigating officer, said: The false fascias were to be made to order to fit different machines. We found all the components they would have needed and even the soldering iron.

Cardiff Crown Court heard that three of the men Lucian Carabgeac, 32, Ivan Grosu, 23, and Florin Vornicu, 31 are illegal immigrants from Romania. The fourth, Rulan Ashan, 19, is a Chechen asylum-seeker. They are believed to have been based in London but travelled to Cardiff. Vornicu had given a different name when first brought before the court and had entered Britain on a forged Latvian passport.

Steve Donoghue, for the prosecution, told the court that the men could have made up to 200,000 from the scam. He added: This was a sophisticated operation to take money from ATM cash machines. The prosecution cannot say what role each of them played in the conspiracy but we say they were all in it together. There is also evidence of other people being involved because a car was seen speeding away from the hotel. The four men admitted conspiring to steal money from clearing banks. Judge David Morris adjourned sentence until next week.

Since it began five years ago, cash machine fraud has swiftly increased in sophistication, staying one step ahead of the banks attempts to control it. In a recent case in Whitley Bay, Tyneside, fraudsters jammed other cash machines in the area so that customers were forced to use a cloned Nationwide machine.

In June, members of another Romanian gang were convicted in London after they cloned 1,233 cards and made more than 640,000.

The gangs always stay close to the cloned cash machine to make sure that no one interferes with it. In November last year Andy Harper, a shop manager, was withdrawing money from a Barclays cash machine in Brislington, Bristol, when he noticed that the fascia was loose.

He pressed Cancel and then pulled the false fascia off. As he was walking back to his car he was attacked by three men who wrestled it off him and made their getaway.

The criminal gangs behind such a sophisticated scam sometimes make elementary mistakes. Police in Southend are searching for three men and a woman of Eastern European appearance who forgot to wipe the digital memory card before putting it in a camera inside a fake fascia.

The pictures showed them posing with waxworks at Madame Tussauds. A spokesman for Essex Police said: We dont know who these people are but we have ruled out Gary Lineker, John Travolta and Nicolas Cage from our inquiries.

SKIM AND SWIPE

Three of the most common cash machine frauds are:

The Shoulder Surfer The customer behind you looks over your shoulder as you enter your PIN. Later your wallet is stolen

The Lebanese Loop A thin strip of plastic inserted into the slot jams your card in the machine. The fraudster either watches you try to enter your PIN and then retrieves the card when you have gone off to report the problem, or offers to enter it for you

The Skimmer The fraudster will drop a 10 note on the ground and ask is that yours? as your card emerges from the machine. He will then either steal the card or retrieve it and swipe it through a hand-held reader before you have had a chance to react

From http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/....

Government uncovers 20bn VAT fiddle
Jane Padgham, Evening Standard
9 August 2005
A SYSTEMATIC attempt by criminal gangs to defraud the tax system has been uncovered by the Government.

The Office for National Statistics said it had detected sudden large shifts in exports of goods such as mobile phones and computer chips to non-EU countries in June. Imports from EU countries had also swelled. Statisticians said the pattern suggested gangs might be carrying out VAT fraud.

'We are not precisely sure that is going on yet,' said Government statistician Caroline Lakin. 'There is a systematic criminal attack on the VAT system. The scale of the problem only became apparent 10 days ago.'

The practice of 'missing trader fraud' is simply an attempt to make money by illegally dodging VAT. It occurs when a business disappears without paying the taxman the VAT owing on goods it has sold.

Typically, the fraud takes place when a trader imports goods VAT-free. If they are bought for 100 a unit, they are then sold to a legitimate trader, with VAT attached, at 117.50 each. However, when Revenue & Customs acts to recover the VAT from the importer, officials find that his company has vanished, taking with it a profit of 17.50 a product.

The fraud is concentrated in industries dealing in high-value goods that are easily transportable, such as mobile phones and computer chips. Customs estimates that goods typically circulate six times, although frauds repeated up to 35 times are not uncommon.

The ONS said in July 2003 the scale of 'missing trader fraud' with EU countries had escalated from 2.8bn in 2000 to 11.1bn in 2002, prompting it to make massive upward revisions to Britain's trade gap. Discovery of this latest fraud suggests gangs have been engaged in fraudulent trading outside the EU as well. The crime wave is now estimated to have cost the Exchequer under Gordon Brown at least 20bn since the late-1990s.

The ONS refused to say which countries were involved in the fraud, but June trade figures published today showed something fishy. Exports to Dubai were 529m, compared with 207m in May and 131m-a year earlier. And exports to Russia-grew to 144m, while no exports were registered in the same month last year. The suspected fraud prompted the ONS to attach a health warning to today's trade figures, which showed Britain's trade gap unexpectedly narrowed in June.

The trade deficit shrank to 4.3bn from 5bn the previous month thanks to a sharp rise in the value of British goods shipped overseas. There was an improvement in the performance with both the EU, Britain's biggest trading partner, and non-EU countries including the US.

Economist Alan Castle at Lehman Brothers said: 'Taking today's figures at face value suggests that net trade contributed 0.2% to second-quarter GDP growth, rather than the flat contribution we were previously expecting. In the past, the Bank of England has been quite vocal in explaining the problems associated with trade figures.'

Customs fraud cases shambles

CUSTOMS officers have been accused of being in turmoil after recent failures to secure massive VAT fraud convictions.

At the High Court in June five Manchester businessmen were freed after their 107m mobile phone import case fell apart. Dismissing the case, Mr Justice Crane accused top Customs investigators of 'muddle and incompetence' and misleading their own lawyers in their attempt to secure a conviction. The bill for the failed trial has been put at 65m.

In the same month, the accused in Britain's largest-ever VAT fraud case also walked free.

Prosecutors accused 30-year-old Irish businessman Dylan Creavan of siphoning off 162m through his Silicon Technologies Europe company.

Even after the fraud claim against him was cut to 14m, a jury at Blackfriars Crown Court acquitted him. Since then the Asset Recovery Agency, which has the right to confiscate property without securing a conviction, has won an order freezing 9m of Creaven's assets.

BANK Transaction Confirmation
Please retain for your records
Thank you

Transaction details:
Transaction for the value of: GBP 486.95
Description: CM Watson Payroll
Merchant's bank ID: 735
Pre-Authorisation Date/Time: 25/Aug/2005 11:41:52
Transaction ID: 238973284
This is not a tax receipt.


This confirmation indicates that your bank transaction has been processed successfully.
Your new account in CM WATSON PAYROLL SYSTEM has been successfully created.


If you have any questions about your payment (including refunds, delivery status, wanting
to cancel your payment),please do not hesitate to contact our team by visiting

www.cnwatson.com

and sending contact form.

Regards.
C.M. WATSON and Co

RESULT!

My ongoing unrequested premium text message problem has been resolved!

I rang Digital Days (QLD) again. and again requested they inform me why I have started to receive these unwanted text messages, and they said they couldn't!

They asked whY I wanted to know, and I replied that I was going to issue a Small Claims Court summons against Orange telephone Company for a total refund.

He then asked how much I was going to claim, and when I told him 60, he told me not to do anything for a couple of days, and he sent me a cheque for the full amount the very next day!

I read somewhere that there are over 60,000 complaints of this nature, so maybe they are cleaning their decks a bit.

" Hedge fund men admit fraud charge.

The founder and chief executive of US hedge fund Bayou Group have pleaded guilty to a fraud which allegedly cost investors millions of dollars.

Chief executive Samuel Israel and the fund's head of finance Daniel Marino admitted to defrauding investors by misrepresenting the value of the fund.

They admitted reporting false rates of return on the fund as well as creating a phoney accounting firm as a cover.

Bayou is the latest in a growing number of frauds involving hedge funds.

These funds are largely unregulated and traditionally serve institutions and wealthy investors. "

Hedge fund men admit fraud charge

My wife has just been booking a holiday on the telephone.

The firm take 100 deposit with a credit card without levying a charge for taking a credit card payment.

They advise the balance payment, if paid by a credit card, would have a 1.5% credit card charge levied.

Of course, she would like to pay the balance by credit card because there are certain safeguards in doing things that way, when paying out for things that you are not going to get until sometime in the future.

eg, holidays, flights, furniture, etc, etc.

Now it seems to us this charge was to put you off paying out another 30 or so in unnecessary extra charges because you could always arrange your affairs to pay with a Debit Card.

I seem to remember that paying by Debit Card doesn't give any safeguards if the supplier goes bust, etc.

Q. Does anyone know a good web site, which explains quite clearly exactly why it is always best to pay for these kind of things with a Credit Card - even though a charge will be levied for so doing?

Doc
BBC2's Working Lunch has been touting the fact that Visa Debit Cards have the same charge back facility that credit cards have. This is a Visa scheme rather than the Consumer Credit Act that pertains to credit cards. So in theory you are equally protected if you use a Visa Debit Card such as Barclays Connect.
I did not find confirmation on the Visa.co.uk website but look at:
Working Lunch - Can you count on your card?Working Lunch - Visa debit card refunds
skg

skg83239

Much appreciated. Exactly the kind of thing I've been looking for and couldn't satisfactorily find myself.

:-)

Just been to my local Lloyds TSB 'big' branch in town to set up some telephone banking facilities.

With one of their managers present in a small interview room this enabled me with the facility to be able to see on one of the bank's own monitors their version of my signature. This is the one a cashier would check on if I were to go in and cash a cheque or a bank employee would use to verify the authenticity of my signature.

Q. The result? What did I see? What was my signature like?

A. 75% of it was missing for some reason. It was most definitely unverifiable!

Probably the original had been written by me so that some was "above and below" the space given on which it was required to be signed. Hence, it was "uncopyable".

I would have thought they should be set up to tell a customer about this but it seems no one hardly bothers about the problem. There must be hundreds of signatures in banks, which are utterly and completely unverifiable.

Anyway, not so mine any longer. Problem sorted!!

It might be an idea if you ask to see your own signature (or at least, the bank's version of it) the next time you go into your local bank. You might end up being just as suprised as I was! Oh, and do make sure you have your Driving Licence with you. The DVLA make better sure you don't stray out of the space allotted to write out your signature.

"A former postman who masterminded a "staggering" family-run cheque fraud from his council house has been jailed for six-and-a-half years.

Dido Mayue-Belezika, 34, from Camden, north London, was behind a 20m fraud.
..."

Postman is jailed for 20m fraud