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.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6017250,00.html

22 held in major VAT fraud probe
Press Association
Tuesday August 15, 2006 9:08 PM

Twenty-two people have been arrested as part of a major investigation into a suspected VAT fraud worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

Police and customs officers swooped at addresses in London, Manchester and Glasgow in the early hours.

More than 60 search warrants were executed during the operation, which is the biggest ever undertaken by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).

About 400 HMRC criminal investigators are being supported by 100 officers from Strathclyde, Greater Manchester and the Metropolitan Police in the inquiry.

Gordon Miller, deputy director, HMRC Investigation, said: "Organised criminals are attacking the tax system, with the aim of stealing huge amounts of revenue. The scale of the problem across Europe is unprecedented, and HMRC has significantly strengthened its response to this serious fraud.

"The operation, the biggest ever undertaken by HMRC, is part of a large-scale, international criminal investigation into frauds that may run to hundreds of millions of pounds."

Police made 15 of the detentions in the Glasgow area, five in the Manchester area and two in London. The investigation is focused on a highly sophisticated scam known as "carousel" fraud. It involves importing small high-value goods such as mobile phones free of VAT from EU countries, then selling them with 17.5% tax added in the UK.

Instead of handing the VAT to the Government, the importing company, run by criminals, is hastily shut down and they pocket the cash. This loss of tax is often compounded when the new owners of the goods export them again and can legally reclaim VAT they paid.

Goods go round in a "carousel" via bogus supply chains within and beyond the EU as they are imported and exported again and again. Mr Miller added: "We are committed to tackling carousel fraud and to showing the criminals behind it, wherever they operate in the world, that there are no safe havens."

Carousel fraud is estimated to have cost the UK Exchequer up to 1.9 billion in stolen VAT revenues between 2004 and 2005.

Travel agents warn of holiday Web scam

" LONDON (Reuters) - Travel agents warned holidaymakers on Friday to be careful about booking trips online after an Internet scam was uncovered that has left nearly 3,000 people out of pocket.

A number of fake holiday Web sites, thought to be operated by the same individuals, have been set up and then quickly closed once people have been conned into paying for non-existent holidays, the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) said.

"We understand there are six or seven Web site names that have been defrauding people," said ABTA's Dee Byrne.

She said about 3,000 people have been hit by the con.

"Unfortunately many will have lost their money unless they paid by credit card, in which case they should be able to recoup their losses," she added.

The Metropolitan Police, the Fraud Squad and the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) are all investigating the scam which is thought to have netted hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Byrne said ABTA's advice is to check its own Web site or that of other affiliated organisations like ATOL - (Air Travel Organisers' Licensing) to make sure their holiday firm is bona fide.

"We are saying 'just be careful about booking holidays over the Internet'. Obviously there are a lot of good companies that are perfectly OK, but people need to check," she said.

Byrne said people should be wary of too readily accepting an offer if it looks too good to be true and should instead spend sometime making simple checks on the credentials of the holiday firm."

Cornhill Insurance callback scam 01454 201129

Here's a cheeky little number that someone at Cornhill Insurance dreamed up and was probably paid very well for:

Your home phone rings and you answer it. But there's nobody on the line.
You do 1471 and get the above number. Naturally you ring straight back to find out who wants you etc.

Surprise, surprise. It's a recorded announcement from Cornhill stating that they've tried to contact you re an insurance quote.

I don't know what the rest of the message says as I hung up.

This just sounds like what happens in a telemarketing centre. The computers are programmed to dial the next few calls ahead to keep the throughput up, and when you answer the call is put through to an available agent. If there is no available agent, you will hear nothing on the line. Ofcom recently made these companies provide a calling number and limit the percentage of these failed calls to a certain amount. The number 01454 of course is just a normal geographic number, they are not making any money from you.

Watch out for a bogus BT call

"Con artists have come up with a new scam for getting bank account details from the unsuspecting public.

Beds Police say householders have been conned into giving bank details to someone pretending to be from British Telecom.

Victims have been phoned at home and told they owe BT a small amount of money which, unless it is paid immediately, will lead to their phone being cut off.

In spite of arguing with "BT" for several minutes, the latest victim was eventually persuaded by the caller to use her debit card over the phone to "pay" the 14 he claimed she owed.

As she normally pays her bill by direct debit, she then called BT's complaints department about the mix-up and was told they had not in fact contacted her at all.

They also advised her to contact her bank when she subsequently did this she found that 1,932 had been removed from her account.

Other victims have lost amounts ranging between 30 and 2,173, where their account details have subsequently been used for purchases.

Victims of the scam say the caller is very plausible and even gets a "manager" to call back later in the day to confirm that the payment has gone through and the bill settled.

Police are warning the public never to give personal details, especially bank details, to unexpected telephone callers even if they seem plausible and contact the company yourself to discuss the matter.

The same goes for internet banking. Emails seeming to be from a bank requesting security details are always an attempt by fraudsters to steal money and should be ignored."

What politicians etc don't realise, don't care or even not in their interest to stop is that frauds and scams are clear, serious and present danger to the UK. 7/7 is trivial by comparison.

New data theft scandal rocks subcontinent's call centres

" Conal Walsh
Sunday September 3, 2006
The Observer

Leading British and American companies face being dragged into an emerging fraud scandal at a call centre company in India.

V-Angels, a Delhi-based outsourcing company that handles customer inquiries for telecoms firms in the West, has reported a number of employees to the police for allegedly stealing highly confidential customer data.

Som Mandal, V-Angels' lawyer, confirmed that the firm had made a police complaint. He declined to identify V-Angels' clients, citing commercial confidentiality, but confirmed that they include 'half a dozen blue chip companies in Britain and the US'.

BT, Cable & Wireless and Vodafone all have substantial outsourcing operations in India but each denied this weekend that it had any contracts with V-Angels.

Although nobody has yet been found guilty of wrongdoing, the affair will raise fears about cyber crime and data protection in India.

Earlier this summer a worker at HSBC's data processing centre in Bangalore was charged with using British customers' personal details to raid their online accounts. Last year staff at another call centre were accused of stealing thousands of dollars from Citibank customers.

Numerous banks and utility companies have moved their call centres to India, where labour costs are cheaper. The trend has been criticised by the Amicus union and some customers who have complained about poor service."

Lloyds manager jailed over fraudulent bank loans plot

"A former Lloyds TSB manager has been jailed for two years and three months for passing customers' personal details to criminal gangs who then used the information to set up fraudulent bank accounts and obtain loans.

Seevaratnam Sivathasan, who was an assistant manager at a Lloyds branch in Putney, west London, had already pleaded guilty to 18 counts of corruption and three of theft against the bank's customers.

Passing sentence at Croydon Crown Court yesterday, Allen Gore QC told Sivathasan that the jail term reflected the fact that he had "grossly abused" the trust of Lloyds and its customers.

The Sivathasan case is the latest to be brought in a two-year investigation by the City of London Police fraud squad called Operation Horizon. It is looking into bank staff suspected of working with external gangs who have stolen collectively more than 3.5m from customers' accounts. To date more than 30 people have been arrested and over 30 search warrants executed.

..."

KAYAK,

Tonight I have received another call from Cornhill - 01454 201129.

This has to be a scam, if you ring the number, (non premium) you will hear their reocrded message.

Still not sure what the scam is Andy, Cornhill don't make any money from calls to that number, but if you listen to the message it says they tried to contact you regarding an insurance quote, may ring you again, but if you wish you can get back to them on an 0800 number. If it's a telephone dialling scam it's the first with an 0800 number :-)

Kayak,

Ok I have now had a call where they did not hang up!

I mentioned to the guy about the hang ups, and he said a lot of people complained about that!

My take on this now is the following;

They call you for only one or two rings, so most people won't be able to answer in time, cost to Cornhill = 0

You ring 1471 and hear the recorded message, you pay for the call at normal rates, cost to you = 5p maximum.

After hearing the message, you are interested and use the 0800 number, cost to Cornhill say 20p, but they have a prospect that has bothered to ring, so more likely they can turn that prospect into a customer!

Only my theory, but I accept it's not a scam, just an annoyance really.

Hmmm?

Scams steal 8.4bn from taxpayer

British taxpayers have lost a "catastrophic" 8.4bn to VAT fraudsters in 12 months, according to the results of a report obtained by Panorama.

The figures claim that the UK lost five times more money to VAT cheats than any other European Union (EU) country between June 2005 and June 2006.

The estimates from a Belgian taskforce created to fight fraud are much higher than the last published UK estimates.

Britain said it did not recognise the figures in the Belgian report.

"We cannot comment on the substance of this report and we do not recognise the figures that are set out for the UK," a Treasury spokesman said.

The government's own figures put VAT fraud losses at 1.9bn for 2004/05. Estimates for 2005/06 are not expected until the Chancellor's pre-Budget report is published later this year.

Huge losses

The higher 8bn Belgian estimate is based on figures from Eurocanet - a project sponsored by the European Commission using figures from the police and other groups.

"We estimate the loss to Britain to amount to 3.7bn euros with the 'Dubai Connection' adding some 8bn euros to this figure. It's clear there are very close commercial links between Britain and Dubai," said Herve Jamar, the Belgian Secretary of State responsible for VAT.

"Carousel fraud" involves the repeated import and export of small, high-value goods such as computer chips and mobile phones.

Under EU trading rules a UK company importing the goods does not have to pay VAT, instead it is charged to the British company that sells the goods on. The goods are then exported before being re-imported.

Each time the goods go round the carousel, the VAT that should be paid to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) goes missing.

'Dubai Connection'

The fraud first emerged in the mid-1990s but has exploded in the UK over the past year as criminals exploit what legal authorities call the "Dubai Connection".

This involves exporting the goods to Dubai before sending them back into Europe and round the carousel again.

By exporting the goods to Dubai, the fraudsters break the evidential chain making the fraud harder to detect.

According to Eurocanet, almost three quarters of the tax stolen by the fraudsters in the UK between June 2005 and June 2006 involved carousel frauds using the 'Dubai Connection'.

However, the Treasury has vowed to tackle the problem through a "reverse charge" scheme, which will come into force in December.

Under the new rules the last company to sell on goods like mobile phones - such as a retailer - will be responsible for paying the VAT.

"If it was implemented it would remove the mechanism for stealing VAT from about 95% of the goods traded in carousel frauds," Treasury Committee chairman John McFall told BBC News.

"The government, I believe, has got space in the Finance Bill to include that reverse charge."

A Treasury spokesman said the government was working hard to tackle the problem "through a combination of legislation, litigation and operational activity", with 1,400 HMRC officers dedicated to the task.

Recently, the London offices of Transworld Payment Solutions were raided in an international operation against an offshore bank involved in VAT fraud.

HMRC sources told the BBC that the move had led to a "significant" fall in the trade in fraud during July.

# This is a website update to a Panorama film first broadcast on July 16 2006 called Do You Want To Be A Millionaire which investigated "carousel fraud" and confronted one convicted criminal, "Riviera" Ray Woolley. He was hiding in Switzerland having escaped from prison by hailing a taxi.

--------------------------------------------------------

From Transworld Payment Solutions website http://www.twps.com/company.asp

"Established in 1989 as a consulting firm, TransWorld soon expanded its activities to include project management, software installation and transaction processing. Capitalizing on its experience working with key financial institutions and its close ties with solution providers and card associations, TransWorld is able to offer a full range of reliable solutions to see you through the pintail stages of analyses and conception to the resulting implementation and ongoing support."

Sometimes, it's the government doing the scamming!

I've just been reading how the US government trick people into voluntarily signing up for military service.

Firstly, they make a law requiring all the young males, at or about age 18, submit to a Registration Procedure.

When the government deem it necessary, all the registrants are drafted to attend a recruitment centre for an Induction Process.

At the end of the IP the draftees are instructed to 'stand on the line' and this is when they are tricked into joining up.

If you want to know HOW, click on the link.

NB.The link doesn't take you to a trick site or anything like that. But the web site at the end of the link does reveal what a 'con' the induction draft process actually is, sorry WAS.

Thanks to the internet, these days young US males won't be so easily manipulated into joining up, now that they can find out how to avoid being conned.

No dought some conflicks were neccesary but Is It not the same old story DP? the crooks at the top of society prosecute these wars and use the masses to fight and die in them.

The Data Theft Scandal

Channel 4 Thursday 5 October 2006, 9pm

In this edition of Dispatches, Sue Turton, senior reporter for Channel 4 News, investigates the call centre security failures which allow personal financial details to be stolen and illegally traded.

In a 12-month undercover investigation, Turton infiltrates criminal networks which trade British consumers' bank and other confidential information for huge profits in India, the world's new call centre capital.

Uncovering the methods used to thieve confidential data ranging from credit card numbers to passport details, Turton exposes the alarming security failures in a number of commercial call centres which allow detailed financial data on individuals to be gathered and sold on with ease. She discovers shocking data protection breaches and a new phenomenon known as 'data farming' the unauthorised 'harvesting' of personal data to be sold on or exchanged for profit.

This investigation also reveals the scale of some of the call centre scams as Turton is offered hundreds of thousands of 'hot leads', full banking and financial profiles, to purchase.

In the UK, Turton meets a former data thief and people who have fallen victim to this international trade. She also shows her undercover footage and findings to a UK data protection lawyer who is appalled, saying: 'You couldn't scare me more. This is as bad as it gets. This is evidence of serious criminal offences.'

I found the following:

From Caslon Analytics - an Australian research, analysis and strategies consultancy

ChoicePoint

Major reference agency ChoicePoint sold the personal financial information of 145,000 people to criminals purporting to be legitimate businesses, a large-scale form of pretexting.

The incident has attracted particular attention because ChoicePoint initially sent notice of breach only to Californians. Following criticism after announcement of its security failure it spent US$11.4 million during the following six months on credit reports and credit monitoring for victims.

Wachovia

In 2005 US police charged Orazio Lembo and bank employees working for Wachovia, Bank of America, Commerce Bancorp and PNC Bank with selling customer information to over 40 debt collection agencies, law firms and others. The data included names, account numbers and balances regarding over 500,000 consumers.

Lembo's gang reportedly operated for over four years, with Lembo pocketing several million dollars. He was also charged with narcotics, forgery and theft counts.

Gratis

New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer sued Washington-based Gratis Internet for selling email addresses, despite that organisation's promise of confidentiality to consumers, in what is claimed as "the biggest deliberate breach of Internet privacy".

Consumers thought that they were simply registering to see a site. Contrary to a Gratis statement that it "does not ... sell/rent e-mails" it allegedly sold 7 million addresses to three independent marketers, resulting in hundreds of millions of spam messages.

Call Centres

In 2005 the London Sun illustrated concerns about offshoring call centres by buying information about 1,000 UK customers from a Delhi call centre worker for 4.25 each. The information included bank account details, passwords, addresses, phone numbers and passport details. The worker reportedly indicated that he could provide information on up to 200,000 accounts each month. India's IT & communications minister commented that the government had nothing to do with the "freak incident".

In 2006 Nadeem Kashmiri of HSBC's Bangalore call centre was arrested after over 230,000 was stolen from the accounts of British customers, with claims that he sold confidential information to a criminal gang.

During the same year Australian current affairs program Four Corners revealed sale by an Indian call centre of personal information about Australians, including birth certificate details, ATM numbers, passport and driver licence details, phone numbers, address (including time at that address), marital status, number of dependants, occupation, job title and employer's business name.

South Korean ISPs

During 2006 personal information regarding some 8.37 million high-speed internet subscribers in South Korea was sold by staff of four leading ISPs: KT, Hanaro Telecom, Onse Telecom and Thrunet. Former and current staff of the ISPs appear to have sold customer names, identification numbers, telephone numbers and addresses to marketers for around US$0.01 per head.

Critics alleged that management of the ISPs was negligent (if not complicit in the sales) and as highlighted in the final page of this note initiated class action for damages.

KDDI

In 2006 Japanese telecommunications group KDDI confirmed that information about 3.9 million of its DION internet customers, as of 2003, had been provided to a third party. The data included names, gender, addresses, birth dates and telephone numbers, although apparently not bank details and passwords. Akio Minomura and Akihiko Torii are suspected of having sought to extort some 10 million from KDDI in exchange for the information.

IPCC, USN and Air Miles

In 2006 personal details of 20,000 people who made complaints about the Hong Kong police appeared on the net. Publication of the data, originally provided to the HK Independent Police Complaints Council (IPPC), was apparently accidental.

The IPCC database contained full details of complaints made from 1996 to 2004, including the dates of each complaint, full name of the complainant, their address, the nature of alleged offences, information on allegedly corrupt police and the outcome of complaints. Corporate monitor webb-site.com has speculated that the publication may have occurred when an IPCC contractor mistakenly copied the files onto a commercial server in the course of maintenance work.

Also in 2006 the US Navy reported that five spreadsheets with sensitive information on some 28,000 personnel and their families were posted on a civilian web site. The spreadsheets included names, Social Security numbers and birth dates.

The Navy announced that it had "moved quickly to have the spreadsheets taken down" and of course had "no evidence that any of the compromised information has been used fraudulently".

A month later the Naval Safety Center reported that it had discovered personal information on over 100,000 Navy and Marine Corps aviators was publicly accessible on its site. The data included Social Security numbers. The same data was featured on 1,083 web-enabled 'safety program disks' mailed to all USN and Marine Corps commands; the Center said it was "working to recall the disks".

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada reported in 1999 that Canadian business Air Miles left 50,000 records of people in its loyalty program (the dot-ca version of Australia's Frequent Flyer scheme) on its site "for several months and possibly for as long as a year". The information included the individual's Air Miles card number, name, home phone numbers, email addresses, business name and phone number.

ADP

In 2006 Automatic Data Processing (ADP), one of the world's largest payroll service companies, confirmed that it had provided a scammer with personal information of investors who had purchased stock through brokerages that use ADP's investor communications services. Fidelity Investments indicated that the breach compromised 125,000 of 72 million active accounts; Morgan Stanley said 3,800 of its clients were affected; UBS said 10,000 of its clients were affected.

The data included investors' names, mailing addresses and the number of shares they held in certain companies. It apparently did not include Social Security numbers or brokerage account numbers.

ADP commented

We have been advised that the information disclosed was not sufficient by itself to permit unauthorized access to your account, and we have no evidence that the information on the lists has been improperly used. However, we recommend that you be alert to any unusual or unexpected contact or correspondence.

8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

Actually, I could copy and paste a whole pile of the above company's web site on here! I suggest you go and have a read at some of it for for yourself:-

Start at http://www.caslon.com.au - Security and Infocrime

Fifth of CVs contain major lies

'A fifth of CVs submitted for job applications contain significant lies, such as exaggerated academic qualifications, a survey suggests.

The study of more than 3,700 CVs submitted for jobs this year was conducted by employee screening specialists, The Risk Advisory Group.

...

"This year's results have yet again brought to our attention how unscrupulous candidates can be when applying for jobs, and highlight their apparent lack of conscience towards potential new employers," said The Risk Advisory Group's head of employee screening, Sal Remtulla.

... '

On post 263.

IME, at most 1 in 5 people are honest about their work expertise, experiences, AND conscientious in applying themselved to their jobs. Some are either AB's (Absolute Bullshits) or CDs (Contemptible Deceptions), often both.

FYI

http://boards.fool.co.uk/Message.asp?mid=10010921&sort=whole#10215057

Author: KonradMeier Number: 7917 of 7923
Subject: Re: Internationale Zurich Gruppe Date: 10/10/06 10:01
Post New | Post Reply | Reply Later | Create Poll Report this Post | Recommend it!

Recommendations: 5
****IMPORTANT INFORMATION-PLEASE READ****


I am posting this message in my capacity as in-house legal counsel of the Zurich Financial Services Group (Zurich). Zurich is a leading insurance-based financial services provider worldwide with its registered head-office in Zurich, Switzerland. Zurich has built up a substantial goodwill and reputation in the ZURICH name in the insurance and financial services market in Europe and throughout the world.

Please be informed that Internationale Zurich Gruppe (IZG) and First Zurich Group are in no way associated with Zurich. To our understanding, the above mentioned organizations are not authorized by the FSA (the UK Financial Services Authority) to provide financial services. In addition, the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, Finansinspektionen, posted on its website the following warning regarding Internationale Zurich Gruppe:

http://www.fi.se/Templates/Page____6469.aspx

Zurich has informed the relevant authorities about their possibly illegal conduct. If you have been affected by activities of one of these organizations we recommend that you contact the Metropolitan Police at 'fraud.alert@met.police.uk', webpage www.met.police.uk/fraudalert/.

Thank you.

Konrad Meier
Group Legal Department
Zurich Financial Services
Zurich, Switzerland