Tag • #scams

‘Prolific and heartless’ serial romance fraudster jailed for 11 years

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 4 days ago - 11:36

St Albans resident David Checkley conned at least 10 female victims across UK out of £100,000

The police officers whose investigation led to the jailing of a serial romance fraudster for 11 years said he was “the most prolific and heartless” person carrying out this kind of fraud they had ever come across.

David Checkley, who also used the alias David Cohen, was sentenced on Wednesday after being found guilty of 19 counts of fraud and one count of theft after Met detectives linked his offending across the UK and identified a number of high value assets.

‘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.

More Booking.com customers come forward about scam ‘confirmation’ emails

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 21 November - 07:00

The website is sending out warnings to cancel cards after noticing ‘suspicious activity’

Three weeks after Observer Cash revealed that the Booking.com email system had been hacked and that a number of customers had had their credit card details compromised, it has emerged that the website has been sending emails to some customers warning them to cancel their cards. At the same time, others have come forward to say “me too”.

Those affected had either checked in, or were due to check in, to a hotel they had reserved using theBooking.com’s website or app. They had received an email – from the official noreply@booking.com address – warning their stay may have to be cancelled unless they handed over bank card details via an embedded link.

‘Harmless’ fraud soars in UK amid cost of living crisis

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 19 November - 09:00

Growing numbers are giving false information to obtain money, new study shows

A growing number of people are committing fraud such as cheating on their council tax or trying to reclaim money on lost gambling bets, research has found.

The cost of living crisis has led to a rise in “first-party fraud” where people give false information, or misrepresent themselves, in order to make money, according to the fraud prevention service Cifas.

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."

Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments

TSB reimbursed 15 times more customers’ fraud losses than Monzo in 2022

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 31 October - 17:37

Regulator figures show huge differences in banks’ treatment of fraud victims, from 94% of claims refunded by TSB to 6% at Monzo

The shocking disparity in the way the banks refund fraud victims has been laid bare in figures that show TSB refunded 94% of customer fraud claims in full last year, while for Monzo the figure was just 6%.

According to the data, published on Tuesday by the Payments System Regulator (PSR), TSB was the standout bank in terms of refunding the victims of authorised push payment (APP) fraud.

UK consumers lose £580m to fraudsters in first half of 2023, figures reveal

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 24 October - 23:01

Romance scams and ID theft among fastest growing categories with total of 1.4m fraud cases recorded thus far, says UK Finance

Scammers were responsible for nearly 1.4m cases of fraud in the UK during the first half of 2023 – the equivalent of one every 12 seconds – with romance scams and ID theft among the fastest growing categories.

Overall, criminals stole £580m in the first six months of the year, according to the banking trade association UK Finance, suggesting households are set to lose more than £1bn to fraudsters during 2023.

Booking.com customers targeted by scam ‘confirmation’ emails

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 23 October - 08:00

Travellers are getting seemingly convincing messages asking them to provide bank card details and threatening their reservation will be cancelled

Travellers using the popular hotel website Booking.com are being warned not to fall for scam emails asking them to confirm their hotel payment, after a hack of Booking.com’s email system.

In recent weeks the Observer has been contacted by a number of customers claiming that they had received scam emails from within the Booking.com system.

‘I felt powerless’: how a crypto scam cost a finance boss £300,000

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 10 October - 06:00

Investment manager tells of how fraudsters managed to persuade him to hand over his life savings

A senior manager at a UK investment firm has told how he was conned out of his £300,000 life savings by cryptocurrency scammers.

Matthew Thomas* says he was “probably blinded by a mixture of greed, curiosity and stubbornness” when he was ensnared by the elaborate and complex scam which took place over six months.