The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is carrying out a criminal investigation into accounting irregularities at supermarket giant Tesco. Tesco says it has been “co-operating fully” with the SFO. Last week, the supermarket announced that its profits had been overstated by £263m, up from an initial estimate, made last month, of £250m. The inflated profit figure […]
Month: October 2014
Conman pretended to be in coma for two years
A man who pretended to be so ill that he would often fall into a coma has been caught out after he was filmed walking in and out of Tesco and going on family holidays. Alan Knight, 47, of Swansea, South Wales, pretended to be a paraplegic whose condition was so bad he would frequently […]
Facebook profiles could expose you to card fraud
Millions of social media users may be vulnerable to identity theft, according to a new Which? investigation. Our researchers successfully applied for a credit card in the name of a volunteer, using details from their Facebook profile cross-checked with other publicly available information, such as phone directories. Which? believes many other social media users unknowingly […]
credit card ticket scam at Stansted Airport
A man has been jailed and his girlfriend and two other men given suspended prison sentences over a credit card ticket racket centred on Stansted Airport. Chelmsford Crown Court was told that the scam was used to obtain 31 Ryanair flights from Stansted to Lithuania worth more than £10,000. Marijus Tamkus, 27, of Darling Row, […]
Staples investigating theft of payment card data
Office supply superstore Staples is investigating possible payment card data thefts, according to reports. A blog report by security expert Brian Krebs has suggested that several of its stores in north-east America have been affected by a breach. If correct, it would make Staples the latest in an increasingly long line of US retailers to […]
Cybercrime now becoming a serious problem
Survey finds 51% victims of identity theft, hacking or abuse on social media, while losses from online fraud are £670m a year. Many Britons have been the victim of a cybercrime such as identity theft, hacking or abuse on social media, new research has found. UK losses from online fraud are now running at more […]
Are you the next victim?
Every two minutes of every day, someone in the UK is ripped off by a fraudster or loses money to an online crime. Households are falling prey to investment conmen, cold callers who petrify their victims into thinking they’ve been robbed, fake websites, pension crooks and online bandits who dupe people into giving away their […]
Hajj fraud: UK victims speak out
This year’s hajj pilgrimage was particularly important to Mohammad Jawaid Mir, because he knew it would probably be his last. The 71-year-old British citizen suffers from diabetes and chronic kidney disease and fears his deteriorating health will make future visits to Saudi Arabia impossible. So when Mr. Mir paid a large deposit on a £7,590 […]
How to spot an investment scam
You may think that you’d be wise to a scam, but smooth-talking fraudsters are using techniques that leave more and more people at risk. It’s estimated that around £1.2billion a year is now lost through investment fraud – that’s cash duped from the savings of others, which is never recovered. The average loss amounts to […]
What happens if you reply to a scam email?
It all began when I received a message saying that I was wanted by the FBI in the U.S. The email, from Special Agent Erick Bolt, had an official, and quite intimidating, tone. It said a consignment for me was being held by U.S. customs and he was getting in touch to warn that official […]
We need a national fraud and cyber-crime campaign
Cheap and easy access to the internet is changing the world and transforming our lives. While on a lunch-break at work or sitting on the sofa at home, we can now reach for our mobile phone, tablet, laptop or computer and swiftly and simply deal with the more mundane matters of life – banking, paying […]
We lost £1,000 on a fake holiday booking
The internet is a shoppers’ paradise. At the click of a button, you can snap up anything from your weekly food shop to a rare collectible, a holiday, or a car. But the boom in online trade has also made the internet a target for crooks, who use lookalike websites to dupe shoppers out of […]
Hang Up On Fraud
The Dedicated Cheque and Plastic Crime Unit (DCPCU) is this week launching a new campaign called Hang Up on Fraud. Latest intelligence shows that fraudsters are increasingly targeting consumers directly over the phone. The central message of the Hang Up on Fraud campaign is that ‘people are not always who they say they are’ – […]
Kmart shops hit by payment card hack attack
Cash registers at 1,200 Kmart stores were infected with malware that scooped up payment card numbers for over a month, reports the retailer. In a statement, Kmart said the security breach was discovered on 9 October and that the malware had been operating since early September. An initial investigation suggests the cyber-thieves stole credit and […]
Leading retailers collaborate to curb fraud
Home shopping brand QVC and Shop Direct, which owns Very.co.uk and Littlewoods.com, have signed up to a new initiative aimed at cracking down on customer fraud by sharing transactional data. The new scheme from Transactics, Trade, allows retailers to share and view real-time information related to customer behaviours, including order processing, identity verification, goods lost […]
45% of all fraud is data-driven
Identity fraud that uses victim data to access accounts or open new ones makes up nearly half of all existing fraud, according to the fraud prevention service Cifas. Over 100,000 people have been the victims of data-driven fraud each year since 2010 and 90,000 have already been identified so far this year. Cifas says that […]
Banks launch fraud campaign
The British Bankers’ Association has launched a fraud awareness campaign today and revealed millions are unwittingly leaving themselves vulnerable to scammers who pose as bank staff on the phone and online. Over the past year, This is Money has highlighted a series of such frauds and our investigations have helped win back thousands for readers. […]
Manchester named as UK’s capital of identity fraud
Nearly 600,000 people in the city have had their identity stolen through a variety of methods, such as uncovering credit card details, email passwords, date of births and secret answers used to access confidential data. Manchester is the worst place in the UK for identity fraud, shocking new figures reveal. Nearly 600,000 people in the […]
Fraud police chief warns of lack of officers
There are not enough fully trained fraud investigators, the senior police officer responsible for tackling the crime in England and Wales has warned. The number of recorded fraud cases has risen by two-fifths over the last three years, mostly due to an increase in computer-related fraud. Commander Steve Head said criminal gangs were behind it. […]
Attack code for ‘unpatchable’ USB flaw released
Computer code that can turn any almost any device that connects via USB into a cyber-attack platform has been shared online. Computer security researchers wrote the code following the discovery of the USB flaw earlier this year. The pair made the code public in an attempt to force electronics firms to improve defences against attack […]