Tag • #scams

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Taylor Swift fans given ‘urgent warning’ as £1m lost in ticket scams

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 3 days ago - 11:49

Lloyds Bank says more than 600 of its customers have been tricked by fraudsters so far

A rise in fraud cases involving Taylor Swift fans desperate to buy tickets to her sold-out UK shows has prompted Lloyds Bank to issue an “ urgent warning ” after more than 600 of its customers were scammed.

With the superstar due to arrive in Europe next month , the high street bank said its data suggested that UK fans had lost more than £1m to fraudsters so far.

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I’m a victim of scammers. But Revolut says ‘no’ to a refund

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 10 April - 06:00

The company seems to hold me entirely responsible for the fact £40,000 was stolen

I desperately need help after falling victim to a scam resulting in my Revolut business account being emptied of £40,000. The company is refusing a refund.

It happened in February while I was staying up a mountain in Italy with no internet and a poor mobile phone signal. I declined a call from a hidden number, then took a call from my accountant asking me to pick up the phone to Revolut because there were “some suspicious attempts to access my account”.

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Starling bank refused a £10,000 scam refund for my grieving, ill father

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 18 March - 07:00

The scammers struck two days before he was due to have major heart surgery, and in the midst of grieving for our daughter, who was murdered overseas

In February 2023 my husband, two days before major heart surgery, fell victim to telephone scammers who convinced him they were the Na tWest fraud team and stole more than £130,000 from our personal and business accounts with NatWest, PayPal and Starling bank.

At the time, we were in the middle of a coronial process for our beloved daughter, who had been murdered while working overseas. My husband went into the operating theatre believing us to be financially ruined, and became deeply depressed.

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Millions more in cash needed to fund UK’s open-banking watchdog

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 17 March - 12:06

Exclusive: £10m needed for regulator charged with developing tools to thwart financial crime and protect consumers

Banks are under pressure to stump up millions of pounds in interim funding for the organisation that polices open banking , with regulators saying the new money is needed to prevent financial crime and protect consumers if things “go wrong”.

Large banks including NatWest, HSBC, Lloyds and Santander UK were among more than 40 City firms summoned by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) last week to discuss a cash injection into Open Banking Limited (OPL), the body that oversees innovation in this area.

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Car cloning: innocent UK motorists get fines as scams accelerate

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Saturday, 10 February - 07:00

If a criminal breaks the law in a car with the same number plates as yours, you could be treated as liable

On Wednesday, Bouchaib Moussaid’s £8,000 Kia Sportage car was all set to be sold at auction by bailiffs. The care worker, who lives in St Albans in Hertfordshire, and his extended family have spent the last few weeks trying to stop the sale.

Moussaid is one of a growing number of people who have had their car cloned.

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‘This is what survivors look like’: the romance fraud victims who want to help others

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 26 November - 13:00

Two women conned by fraudsters – one lost $250,000 – have launched a support website and are trying to get the police to take more action

Victims of romance fraud conned out of thousands and left emotional wrecks are having their distress compounded by police telling them no crime has been committed and it is just “boyfriend trouble”.

Now two women who have been victims have teamed up to change perceptions of the crime in the hope of it being treated more seriously.

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Zelle finally caves after years of refusing to refund scam victims

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 13 November - 19:29

Zelle finally caves after years of refusing to refund scam victims

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto )

After scammers spent years swiping hundreds of millions from Zelle users by inducing people to authorize fraudulent payments, lawmakers were horrified to discover in fall 2022 that "the vast majority" of defrauded Zelle users never got their money back. To regulators, it seemed like Zelle was shirking responsibility for policing this increasingly common fraudulent activity on its payments platform.

But now, Zelle has changed its mind and is working harder to protect users from imposter scams. On Monday, Zelle confirmed that at the end of June, the payments app finally started refunding users targeted by scammers.

According to Reuters , this was possible because Zelle's network operator, Early Warning Services (EWS), found a solution that lets Zelle's network of 2,100 financial firms off the hook for reimbursing transactions where "potentially billions of dollars" might be stolen by imposter scammers. Instead of expecting financial partners to foot the bill to cover this fraudulent activity, Zelle simply "implemented a mechanism that allows banks to claw back funds from the recipient's account and return them to the sender."

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Facebook groups exposed to hundreds of hoax posts, study shows

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 24 August, 2023 - 04:01

Charity Full Fact finds more than 1,200 false posts on topics from deadly snakes to serial killers at large

Members of local Facebook groups have been exposed to hundreds of hoax posts, including false reports of missing children or deadly snakes on the loose, a study shows.

The fact-checking charity Full Fact found more than 1,200 false posts on the social media site’s community groups across the world, and warned that these were probably just “the tip of the iceberg”.

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Mysterious leak of Booking.com reservation data is being used to scam customers

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 8 February, 2023 - 13:20 · 1 minute

Mysterious leak of Booking.com reservation data is being used to scam customers

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

For almost five years, Booking.com customers have been on the receiving end of a continuous series of scams that clearly demonstrate that criminals have obtained travel plans and other personal information customers provided to the travel site.

One of the more recent shakedowns happened to an Ars reader who asked not to be identified by his real name. A few months ago, Thomas, as I’ll call him, reserved and paid for a two-night stay scheduled for this July in a hotel in Italy. Here’s the legitimate reservation:

The real reservation from Booking.com.

Last week, out of the blue, he received two emails. The headers show that the first message came from the genuine Booking.com domain. It purported to have been sent on behalf of the hotel in Italy and asked that he click a non-existent confirm button for his upcoming stay. It informed him that the hotel would “also transfer all bookings made from that address to your account.” As phishy as that sounds, the email included his full name, the confirmation number of his reservation, the correct name of the hotel, and the dates of his stay.

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