With the advancement of Chip and Pin and other technological advances designed to prevent fraud, you may think that credit card fraud was a thing of the past. However, as other frauds grab the limelight and attention from the media, there is always going to be scope to return to previous frauds due to there not being as much focus or attention on them as there used to be. It used to be that credit card fraud was one of the biggest types of financial fraud you could find, and one of the most worrying for everyday people. Nowadays with the advent of digital banking and mobile transactions, there are other frauds to be concerned about but credit card fraud has not gone away.
This can be seen with the fact that a gang of six have recently spent over £2m on goods using fake credit cards. The gang had accessed stolen credit card details from online forums and they then adopted the personalities of the original owners, buying items online and over the phone. The scam eventually went on to hit 57 different firms across the United Kingdom with the group snapping up everything from cars to fridges to dog food. All of the men pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud at Manchester Crown Court. All of the men hail from Rochdale in greater Manchester and they have been jailed for a total of over 16 years.
Gang members were looking to sell to obtain money
The items were sent to a number of addresses and locations in Rochdale, with gang members meeting the couriers, taking the orders and then shipping these orders on to people who had already arranged to buy the goods. There is always a buyer for a product or item and this indicates why the gang bought such a wide spread number of items. The main focus for the gang would have been the money they received for selling the goods, not the goods themselves, so as long as they knew that they were able to move the goods on, they would have been more than happy to buy the items. With this in mind, it doesn’t even matter if they were selling the items off at a reduced rate. There clearly needed to be some incentive for a buyer to purchase goods in this manner but with the buyer getting authentic items at a low price and the gang members receiving pure profit on everything they sold, everyone was a winner at that point.
There are lots of losers with credit card fraud
Of course, this isn’t always the case. The buyers may potentially run the risk of having their goods recovered, the gang members have all been sentenced to jail, the firms and credit card companies have a lot of issues to deal with and the people whose credit cards have been stolen may find a nasty surprise or two that needs to be cleared up. There is also the fact that fraud in general tends to see firms pushing up prices to recover their losses and on the whole, this activity will have caused a lot of losses for a lot of people.
The police investigations into these crimes began back in November 2011, which indicates the length of time it can take to bring people to justice. The initial investigation began after police officers received a top off about people selling off stolen steel. Two of the gang members were apprehended at this point and further investigations uncovered items such as dog food, alcohol and fridges all of which had been obtained through compromised details. Police also uncovered text messages and phone records between gang members discussing card details, alias names for people to use and potential targets of the group. The police eventually uncovered a machine which had the ability to print the numbers onto counterfeit cards and fake credit cards were found in three separate properties associated with the gang members.
With so many different types of fraud, it is only natural that some people forget about the opportunities that they can be compromised. Credit card fraud still represents an opportunity for crime, and this isn’t going to go away any time soon, despite the increasing technological advances that have been made with respect to financial transactions.
Andrew Reilly is a freelance writer with a focus on news stories and consumer interest articles. He has been writing professionally for 9 years but has been writing for as long as he can care to remember. When Andrew isn’t sat behind a laptop or researching a story, he will be found watching a gig or a game of football.
