UK Government: Fight online fraud with free iPods

A senior manager in the UK Department of Trade and Industry has come up with a unique alternative to the government's ID Card scheme — give everyone in the country a free iPod installed with a digital certificate.

Patrick Cooper, head of applications and data services at the DTI, floated the idea — albeit with his tongue firmly in cheek — at a event on Tuesday, hosted by Adobe, to discuss technology predictions for 2006.

Cooper said that two of the main issues facing the IT industry are network authentication and security — particularly when using government services online. He claimed that the ubiquity of ADSL networks has come at a price — and that price is security. ISDN was an inherently more secure medium than ADSL but was too expensive to meet the needs of most consumers or small businesses.

But a mobile phone or an iPod equipped with a digital signature or digital certificate which consumers or business users plugged into their home machines would be an efficient way to solve online authentication and identity management problems, Cooper argued.

"If you had a mobile phone with a digital certificate you could dock it into your PC — an iPod with a digital certificate would also work," said Cooper. "My boss would give everyone in the UK an iPod — that would also mean there would be no reason for anyone to steal one because everyone would have one."

Cooper quipped that the iPod scheme would also be a more cost-efficient alternative to other government plans to combat online fraud, such as equipping the proposed National ID Card with a PIN or password system to enable it to work as an online authentication device.

The Government has been facing mounting pressure to combat online fraud after it emerged in December last year that the tax credit Web site had been hit by over £30m of fraudulent claims.

The cost per ID card could rise to almost £500 due to the cost of integrating the IT infrastructure with other government departments and public sector bodies, according to recent figures from the London School of Economics

"It [an iPod with a digital certificate] would be cheaper than the ID Card scheme because everyone at the London School of Economics has told us how expensive ID Cards are going to be," said Cooper.

Under Cooper's plan, giving everyone in the UK an iPod Nano would work out at roughly £139 — even before factoring in the kind of discount that Apple may offer for a bulk purchase of 60 million units.

The LSE has also calculated that integrating the ID card IT infrastructure with all the government departments and public bodies expected to use the national identity register will cost an extra £5bn to £10bn — bringing the total cost of the scheme nearer to £30bn.

According to Apple, the company sold 14 million iPods in the final quarter of 2005 and 32 million for the year in total.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/

Man Arrested For Credit Card Fraud In New York

Braintree - A man giving the name Alix Z. St. Jean, 30, of Brooklyn, N.Y. was arrested at the South Shore Plaza on the afternoon of April 13 after allegedly attempting to use a fraudulent credit card to obtain 500 Euros and 1000 Pounds from the Travel Ex America international currency kiosk, Deputy Police Chief Russell Jenkins told the Forum.

Officers were first alerted to a problem at the kiosk when an employee, recognizing that the name St. Jean was using had been “flagged” for prior fraudulent transactions, pressed the hold-up alarm.

An employee informed Officer Matthew Crowley that St. Jean allegedly used fraudulent credit cards in New York, New Jersey, and earlier in the day had made an attempt at the Prudential Center.

“While speaking with St. Jean, he attempted to flee, and Officer Crowley, assisted by Officers Joseph Molloy and Thomas Molloy, chased him for a short distance before apprehending him at Milton’s,” Jenkins said. After bringing St. Jean back to the kiosk, the officers learned that he presented an Indiana driver’s license and a credit card in the name of another man.”

St. Jean was placed under arrest and charged with possessing fraudulent credit cards, passing a fraudulent card, disturbing the peace when he fled from the officers and resisted their efforts to control him, attempted larceny of the international currency, and possession of a false driver’s license.

St. Jean was held overnight on $20,000 bail pending his arraignment in Quincy District Court.

http://www.wickedlocal.com/braintree/homepage

Two People Accused For Credit Card Information

Two people accused of stealing a man’s credit card information while he was eating at a local restaurant are behind bars.

March 31 at 11:02 a.m. Douglas Washington reported to police he lost his credit card at Ryan’s Restaurant, located just off Highway 45 North in Columbus, according to reports from the Columbus Police Department.

Washington told police when he called his credit card company to cancel the card the company told him four purchases were made using the card; he had not authorized the transactions. The card was used at the Shoe Department, Sports Addition, Wal-Mart and Kmart. The credit card company also told him someone attempted to use the card at Tina Watkins 45 store, located at 712 Highway 45 N. in Columbus. Washington contacted the store, and the store clerk supplied him with a description of the person who used the card. The person in question was described as a white female wearing the uniform of a Ryan’s server.

Washington told police he had been waited on by Tina Gaspar, 40, of 511 Lehmberg Road in Columbus. Gaspar was arrested Tuesday by the CPD on one count felony credit card fraud, intent to defraud.

Further investigation by Washington turned up two credit card receipts from a purchase made using his card at the Shoe Department. Police believe the purchases were made by Chase Adam Fields, 22, of 280 Thaxton Road in Columbus. He was arrested Wednesday on one count felony credit card fraud, intent to defraud.

Bond for Gaspar was set at $2,500. No bond or court hearing has yet been set for Fields.

http://www.cdispatch.com/index.asp

Petrol Station Fraud

Customers at a busy petrol station have been questioned after an investigation was launched into credit card fraud.

A number of customers using the Shell garage on the Chatham-bound carriageway of Blue Bell Hill are believed to have fallen victim to card cloning.

It is not yet known how many customers have been affected. Some motorists have found withdrawals from their accounts have been made across the world, including Thailand, Malaysia, India and Canada.

Shell is now working with Kent Police and banks to investigate the matter and resolve it quickly.

One motorist, who did not want to be named, said: “I have been contacted by my bank because I have had two of my credit cards cloned. One has been used to try to withdraw cash in Thailand but the transaction was unsuccessful.

“On the other card there have been seven attempts to draw money out in Malaysia over the space of three or four days. Four of these were successful, totalling about £400.”

Det Sgt Dave Liffen of Kent Police said: “An investigation has begun into the compromise of payment cards with the full co-operation of the management at the service station concerned, and the relevant financial institutions."

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/

Scam warn from McDonald

The McDonald's restaurant chain is warning of an email scam offering $50 in McDonald's vouchers in exchange for credit card and address details.

A spokeswoman said the fraud had been tried about a month ago in a less polished and less widespread form.

It had re-emerged and was now more sophisticated - the authors had managed to spell New Zealand correctly.

The latest email asks people to click through to a website not linked to McDonald's.

McDonald's New Zealand has displayed a warning on its homepage, but all yesterday the website was inaccessible because of overloading.

The spokeswoman said some customers had been deceived and had submitted their credit card details.

She said McDonald's used reputable research companies and would never request customers' bank or credit card details.

"The source of the email scam is unknown, and it has been reported to the appropriate authorities," the spokeswoman said.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/

Pakistani credit card fraudsters nabbed

Police have arrested eight alleged credit card fraudsters who they say stole almost Dh180,000 (US$49,000) from bank customers.

Brig Musa Yousuf al Naqbi, director of the criminal investigation department at Sharjah Police, said a bank employee had given the Pakistani gang confidential information on clients, which they then used to make credit card purchases. They bought Dh110,000 of jewellery and withdrew Dh68,000 in cash using this method, he said.

Having got a customer’s details, the gang would then phone the bank’s call centre, change their registered phone number to stop the victim being alerted by text message and report the card stolen. They would then use fake IDs to collect the replacement cards and start withdrawing the money in large sums and buying expensive items, said Brig al Naqbi.

http://www.thenational.ae/

Hackers Tested Credit Card Vulnerable System

The number, scale and sophistication of data breaches fueled by hackers last year is rekindling the debate over the efficacy of the credit card industry's security standards for safeguarding customer data.

All merchants that handle credit and debit card data are required to show that they have met the payment card industry data security standards (PCI DSS), a set of technical and operational requirements designed to safeguard cardholder information from theft or unauthorized access.

Yet, some of the most notable data breach incidents last year targeted companies that had recently been certified as compliant with those standards, raising the question of whether the standards go far enough, or if entities that experienced a breach are falling out of compliance with the practices that led to their certification.

In a recent hearing on PCI standards at a House Homeland Security Committee panel, experts from the retail sector charged that the entire PCI scheme is only a tool to shift risk off the banks and credit card companies' balance sheets.

"The premise behind PCI -- that millions of retail establishments will systematically keep pace with the ever-evolving sophistication of today's professional hacker -- is just not realistic," said David Hogan, senior vice president and chief information officer for the National Retail Federation.

Merchants and retailers who experience a breach and are later found to be out of compliance with the PCI standards face steep fines from the credit card companies, and may eventually be forced to pay banks the costs of reissuing compromised cards.

Michael Jones, chief information officer for Michaels Stores Inc., a craft store chain, maintains that the PCI mandates were developed from the perspective of the card companies, rather than those who are expected to follow them.

For example, major tenet of the PCI standards is that hackers cannot steal credit and debit card data if retailers simply choose not to store the data. But Jones said retailers are required to store the data to defend themselves from chargebacks, a dispute that can be initiated by a bank or by a bank's customer. If a retailer cannot produce a copy of the receipt in the face of a chargeback, that retailer is forced to pay the cost associated with that chargeback, Jones said.

"This could have been fairly easily solved using a unique approval ID for each transaction, thus eliminating the need for credit card number storage by the retailer," but the credit card companies have balked at that suggestion, Jones said.

Also, while retailers that do digitally store cardholder data are required to encrypt the information, the PCI standards do not require merchants to encrypt data as it travels over their internal, private networks. This became an issue last summer, when hackers broke into the internal network of Heartland Payment Systems, a major credit card processor in Princeton, N.J. In that attack, the thieves siphoned card data by installing software that watched for and recorded card data as it was sent unencrytped over the company's internal processing networks.

"The credit card companies' financial institutions do not accept encrypted transactions" over these private networks, Jones said. "We at Michaels have asked for three years for the ability to send encrypted information to the bank. To date, this has not happened."

But Bob Russo, general manager of PCI Security Standards Council, said the council has never found a breached entity that was later found to have been in full compliance with the PCI standards at the time of a breach.

"We also recognize that the dynamic nature of any organization can render a validated system noncompliant almost immediately after a satisfactory compliance report has been issued," Russo said.

Joseph Majka, head of fraud control and investigations at Visa, said while there have been a few cases recently in which a business previously validated for compliance with PCI was a victim of a breach, "in all cases our review concluded gaps in PCI DSS controls were major contributors to the breach."

A study released this week by Verizon Business, a company routinely asked to investigate major corporate data breaches, found that in three-quarters of the confirmed breaches it investigated last year the victims were not compliant with PCI DSS or had never been audited. Another 19 percent were found PCI compliant during their last assessment.

Verizon also found that a common reason among businesses that were not compliant with PCI standards was that they failed to monitor all of their network resources or regularly test security systems and processes.

Those two findings were echoed by Nicholas Percoco, vice president of SpiderLabs, the incident response department at Chicago-based security vendor Trustwave, a company that responded to roughly 150 data breaches last year. Percoco said that in many of those cases, the attackers gained access to data through portions of the company's network that were rarely used, much less monitored or maintained.

"In many cases we investigated, the first entry points were Web pages that had 'Copyright 2005' or 'Copyright 2006' written at the bottom," Percoco said. "We talked to several entities who said they knew the sites were old and were planning to decommission them. In some cases, though, the sites had just been merged into the company's property because of some corporate acquisition, and the people in charge didn't even know the sites existed."

In addition, many of the hacks Trustwave investigated last year dealt with breaches where the attackers were present on the victim's internal networks for weeks, even months at a time. With that kind of time, attackers often will be able to write their own custom hacking tools designed to siphon financial data from the victim's computers and network, tools that could easily evade data storage protections as mandated by the PCI standards.

Percoco said his company has seen breaches involving malicious software designed to attack companies that were encrypting data as it moved from point of sale terminals to the victim's internal computer network. In some cases, the thieves intercepted card data by hacking the USB-based card readers that plug in to point-of-sale terminals, he said.

Verizon's breach report, available here (PDF), describes another advanced technique used to steal card data, called "memory scraping," which involves dumping sensitive data that is stored in a computer's memory before or after it can be encrypted.

"Criminals have re-engineered their processes and developed new tools--such as memory-scraping malware--to steal this valuable commodity," the report reads. "This has led to the successful execution of complex attack strategies previously thought to be only theoretically possible. As a result, our 2008 caseload is reflective of these trends and includes more targeted, cutting edge, complex, and clever cybercrime attacks than seen in previous years."

Regardless of the methods used by the attackers, the most important protection businesses can have in place is the ability to detect breaches quickly after they happen, said Bryan Sartin, vice president of investigations at Verizon Business.

"If there is any one thing you can always learn from a company who's been through one of these big breaches, it's the importance of the ability to react to the underpinnings of a breach before it blows up and becomes a major problem," Sartin said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com

Craiglist and credit card fraud

Two East Bay residents were arrested Thursday in Novato in connection with a credit card fraud case involving bicycle sales over the Internet.
Jonathan Cutrer, 35, of San Leandro, and Carla Wilson, 30, of Oakland, were arrested just after 6 p.m. Thursday during an arranged meeting in the parking lot at the Vintage Oaks Shopping Center with an undercover detective from the Marin County Sheriff's Office.

Detectives set up the meeting by answering a Craigslist ad as part of an investigation of credit card fraud involving the theft of four bikes valued at about $13,000 from Mike's Bikes, which has stores in San Rafael and Sausalito among its Bay Area locations.

The bicycles had been stolen and then re-sold through Craigslist, according to officials with the sheriff's office.

Detectives, who confronted Cutrer and Wilson in their parked car near Costco, found one of the bikes in the car.

Cutrer was booked into Marin County Jail on suspicion of commercial burglary, credit card fraud and a parole violation. Wilson was booked on suspicion of receiving stolen property and conspiracy to commit a crime.

Bail was set at $15,000 for Cutrer, $10,000 for Wilson. An initial court appearance is pending.

Jim Staats
jstaats@marinij.com

Credit card fraud case for college droupouts

THANE: Two college dropouts from Bhiwandi who defrauded an Ambernath resident of Rs 19,000 by misusing his credit card details were arrested by the
cyber crime cell of the Thane police.

Sufiyan Ansari (24), who runs a STD/PCO centre from his home along with friends Anjum Shaikh (26) and Tariq (absconding) used the credit card details of Mahesh Bhagwan Sakpal and took the help of technology to rob him of his money.

PSI Usha Suryavanshi said, "They secured Sakpal's credit card number, the CVV number printed on the reverse and the card's validity date.'' The PSI said Tariq, who worked as an executive with a private bank and handled credit cards as well as details of the customers, had passed on the information to his friends.

The scandal came to light on December 25, 2008, after Sakpal got an SMS from the bank informing him that the money had been removed from his account. However, it took the police nearly four months to nab the fraudsters as the SIM cards were obtained by submitting false documents and photographs.

"The amount of Rs 19,000 was used to settle Sufiyan's STD phone bills. He was subscribing to a phone company which provides an M-check facility. Sakpal's credit card details were SMSed to the bank which, in turn, disbursed the amount to Airtel,'' Suryavanshi added. "Two of the mobile numbers were activated in Bhiwandi and two others at Delhi,'' Suryavanshi told TOI. Crime branch officials have held the cellphone company equally responsible for the crime.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

Credit card fraud worths Rs 2.5cr busted with 3 held

NEW DELHI: 3 persons, including former direct selling agent from multi-national bank, had been arrested in a case of credit card fraud assuming Rs 2.5 crore. The accused identified by the name Gurmeet Singh Randhawa (28), Jai Narain (34) and Amit Dalal (27) allegedly laundering off money from several banks.

Randhawa, the alleged mastermind of the gang, earlier used to worked as DSA in some multi-national banks. He procured a numbers of credit card on the basis of fake bank accounts and
then in connivance with 2 shopkeeper, swiped those cards. Police seized 700 credit cards, six PAN cards, five electronics data capturing (EDC) machines and bank account papers.

Additional CP (crime) Satyendra Garg says, "The gang got credit cards issued by the multinational banks vy forged document. Randhawa contacts 2 shopkeepers who had EDC machines. Using these credit cards Narain & Dalal used to shows some fictitious sales of goods. When credit card company send the outstanding bills to the addresses of the cardholder, they found it as a fake. The money was divided between the 3 and bank had to held for losses.''

The gang had an operational for the past few years. Randhawa allegedly have 6 bank accounts on under the name of Amit Tandon.

Narain, ITI graduate diploma holder, was from Delhi. He have 2 shops in Mukundpur & Naraina. Dalal was graduate from Rohtak University and runs a garment shop in Paschim Vihar.

Times of India

Australian paying more bank fees than US and Britain

AUSTRALIANS pay more in bank fees than customers in Britain and US annually, according to a new report from Fujitsu Consulting bank surveys. The Fujitsu Consulting bank fee survey of 2009 reported that Australian households are paying about $1000 a year for their banking services, while in Britain is less than $749 and less than $850 in United States.

Despite the economic downturn this year, the reports predicted that fees is going to increase about 10 percent above the inflation rate of 3.7 per cent. The study also found the following results about Australian Banks.

1.Charge higher fees for additional credit cards (higher than U.S & Britain)
2.Higher fees for overlimit credit (higher than U.S & Britain)
3..Have higher fees on their transaction accounts
3.Charge more to use ATMs overseas and for foreign transactions
4.Make customers pay higher charges for overdrafts.

"Australia has a greater range of fees and higher rates than Britain and the US, which are the most closely comparable markets to Australia." Mr North said many types of Australian bank fees were almost unheard of overseas.

"Personal loans in Britain usually have either no application fees or only $50 in Australia, banks charge $150," he said. "In Australia, banks typically charge $20 for a second credit card in Britain there is no charge, in the US they sometimes charge $3-$5 to make the card." Penalty es ftr early repayments for mortgages were another area Mr Martin said Australians were getting slugged, compared with overseas.

"Consumers are being charged up to $2000 for early repayment, whereas in the US and Britain they almost don ’t exist," he said. Even when British and US banks do charge similar fees, their Australian counterparts charge more. "When you spend over on your credit card in Australia, banks charge penalty rates which are higher than is charged overseas."

"In Britain, the Government has stepped in to regulate fees to make sure they correspond to the costs to the bank, but there is no requirement for bank charges to bear any relationship to the actual cost here," he said.

The news comes as a banking expert says that Australian banks are "regaining pricing power" in an ominous sign that they may start to hike charges even more in the coming months.

David Morgan, former boss of Westpac, said the withdrawal of many foreign banks and weakness among the non-banks meant that the big players could consolidate their position and raise prices.
Even taking into consideration increased funding costs, Mr Morgan said these extra expenses could generally be passed on to consumers.

Choice spokesman Christopher Zinn said the fact Australians pay the highest fees comes as little surprise.

Summaries from
Cairns Post, Queensland,
Australia

Late payments hit UK firms

Around 46 per cent of UK firms have reported a sharp slowdown in the speed of debtors’ payments for goods and services, a new survey claims.

Creditsafe’s study on the problem of late payment found that these firms saw payments slow in the last three months of 2008, while 33 per cent said they now have to wait more than 30 days beyond the terms and conditions to get paid.

Some 66 per cent of firms said they were owed debts which had not been paid within the period set out in the terms and conditions of contracts. Creditsafe surveyed 658 businesses between 1 December 2008 and 20 February 2009.

David Knowles, marketing director of Creditsafe, said: "Delaying the payment of invoices has become part of the business culture in the UK. Companies hold onto cash as long as possible to earn interest and contribute to their liquidity position. The knock-on effect of this practice on the businesses they deal with has, up until now, has been mitigated by the widespread availability of credit from the banks."

He added: "Now this access dried up, late payment is becoming an issue which threatens to have disastrous consequences for some UK businesses."

Creditsafe’s survey emerged after figures from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) last week showed that tightened access to credit was hitting UK businesses hard. The CBI’s second monthly Access to Finance Survey, conducted in February, found that almost 60 per cent of firms that sought new or renewed finance lines said its availability had deteriorated in the past three months. Around 41 per cent had seen no change and no firms saw an improvement, giving a balance of -59 per cent.

Knowles said many companies are holding onto their money for even longer as they try to protect their cash position during the recession.

He added: "Others are facing liquidity issues and business payments are slowing down further at just the wrong time. Disruption to business cashflow is one of the biggest contributors to company insolvencies and when combined with more limited access to credit facilities may put thousands of businesses at risk of going under."

http://www.credittoday.co.uk/news/index.cfm

Businessman acquitted of credit card fraud

KUALA LUMPUR: A businessman was acquitted and discharged without his defence being called by the Sessions Court here yesterday from a charge of having used a fake credit card to purchase goods at Carefour Wangsa Maju, in 2005.

Judge Rosbiahanin Arifin made the decision after finding the prosecution had failed to prove a prima facie case against Lee Chuan Tein, 40, and also had failed to produce a material witness in the case.

"Besides this, there is also no solid evidence the credit card belonged to the accused," she said.

Lee, from Sungai Buloh, Selangor, was alleged to have been in possession of a Visa credit card in the name of CK Lai. which he knew was a fake and intended to use it to cheat the hypermarket.

He was alleged to have committed the offence at Counter 23, Carefour Wangsa Maju here at 11.20 pm on Feb 25, 2005.

He was charged under Section 474 of the Penal Code which provides for jail up to 20 years and fined, if convicted. - Bernama

Local credit card numbers stolen

Two men are in custody and under investigation by the FBI in an identity theft scheme that victimized 2,500 Cache County residents, Smithfield police officials said Wednesday.

In late 2008, San Francisco police served a search warrant on a Bay Area hotel room where detectives found multiple computers and a machine that manufactures magnetic strips used on the back of credit, debit and gift cards, Det. Travis Allen said.

In the computers’ hard drives were the credit card numbers of Cache County residents, many of whom had been notified by their banks of fraudulent charges on their accounts, Allen added.

Smithfield police say they received an unusual number of credit card fraud claims in the fall of 2007.

“We finally found one common factor among everybody that was calling us: They had all used the Family Fun Box,” Allen said.

The DVD-dispensing machines were located in the Summit Creek Sinclair gas station and Lee’s Marketplace in Smithfield. A third operated in the Wellcome Mart in Wellsville.

“We thought maybe somebody had a credit card reading device attached to the machine,” Allen said. “We couldn’t find anything and thought, maybe it’s being internally hacked somehow.”

Smithfield police learned the machines store no account information but encrypt card numbers before sending them to a merchant processor in Dallas, Texas.

The company, Teleasy Corporation, told Smithfield police its servers had never been hacked and that it would know if they had, Dunn said.

Police reports show the unauthorized charges were taking place in Northern California, Illinois, even Spain.

“We did find some instances where someone had gone to a boat shop in Florida and spent several thousand dollars,” added Allen. “In Smithfield, I think we had about 55 victims and over $100,000 in losses.”

Investigators extracted a hard drive from one of the DVD machines and sent it to a computer forensic lab in Salt Lake City where specialists told police there was no evidence of local tampering.

“They could show no compromise to the hard drive,” said Allen. “One thing we don’t know is how the suspects obtained the information.”

Allen presented his findings to the Utah Attorney General’s Office and later to the FBI’s Cyber Crimes Task Force.

Information was distributed to national law enforcement agencies and a tip came when police in California responded to a Longs Drug Store where an individual was allegedly trying to use a gift card that was traced back to a stolen credit card number, Allen said.

An investigation led to the search of a Bay Area hotel where two males were arrested and charged with various crimes, Allen said.

Smithfield police say the names of the individuals have not been released at the request of the U.S. Attorney General’s Office.

“Travis has done an exceptional job on this case” said Smithfield Police Chief Johnny McCoy. “And through the course of that, we’ve identified 2,500 victims just within our area.”

Todd Durrant, owner of the three Family Fun Box machines, said Friday he’s stopped running his business.

“The machine at Lee’s was half my business,” he said. “And when that was gone I didn’t have the income and still had loans to pay on the machines.”

Durrant said he experimented with a cash-based membership card for customers who still used the kiosks but business slowed.

“I would love to see whoever does this kind of crime get what’s coming to them,” he said. “They don’t even see the faces of the people they hurt.”

By Matthew K. Jensen

Fruit pickers accused of credit card scam

A GROUP of former fruit pickers has appeared in court charged over their alleged involvement in a credit card fraud syndicate.

Two of those accused appeared in Brisbane Magistrates Court today and four more are expected to appear this afternoon.

It's alleged the six - who were former fruit pickers - found themselves without money and were recruited into a Malaysian credit card fraud syndicate.

The accused were then allegedly given fake credit cards and sent into Queensland shops to buy gift cards, electronic goods and other items.

Two of those arrested have overstayed their visas.

Two M’sians jailed in Vietnam for credit card fraud

HANOI: Two Malaysians were sentenced to seven years in prison on Wednesday by a Hanoi court on charges of using fake credit cards, the Vietnam news agency reported.

The news agency said Tan Wei Hong, 26, and Cham Tack Choi, 23, were arrested on December 21, 2007 when they went on a shopping spree at the Louis Vuitton fashion shop in Ngo Quyen street, Hoan Kiem district here.

They bought suitcases and bags costing almost US$6,000 (RM2I,244), As Cham was paying the cashier with three international credit cards bearing his name, a shop staff recognised him as he had previously used counterfeit credit cards to pay for goods in the same shop.

The police were alerted.

Tan later admitted to the police that he had visited Vietnam on three occasions and used fake credit cards to pay for US$17,000 (RM6O,218) worth of goods.

Meanwhile, Cham had made two visits to Vietnam for the same purpose and had used counterfeit cards to rack up more than US$16,200 (RM57,341) in goods.

The Star,
Malaysia

Gambler’s card lands him in jail

HE came to Australia with one purpose to gamble his way through Christmas.

But in two days, Malaysian holidaymaker Hoo Foo Lim was in jail after becoming an inadvertent "mule" for an elaborate credit card fraud syndicate.

Yesterday Lim, 62, a retired building site manager, was jailed for six months after being found guilty of 12 fraud charges.

He admitted knowing it was wrong to use fake credit cards to buy $3000 in gift vouchers from David Jones in Castle Towers Shopping Centre, in Sydney ’s west, but said he was targeted by a fraudster outside Star City Casino minutes after losing $3000 his entire holiday budget in one gambling session.

He said a man named Sam outside the casino asked him: "Do you need help?" Magistrate James Garbett said credit card fraud was at "plague proportions" and sentenced Lim to a maximum of one year in jail.

Daily Telegraph,
Sydney,Australia

Crooked, scheming merchants

CREDIT card-issuing banks which turn a blind eye to credit card scams are just as shady as crooked, scheming merchants. This is the claim of the National Consumer Complaints Centre (NCCC).

"There are just too many complaints of credit card fraud cases where banks refuse to take responsibility, insisting that it is the customer ’s own fault," said Muhammad Sha ’ani Abdullah, chief executive of NCCC.

"Aiiy unusual credit card transaction is recorded and if banks are not taking measures to help their own customers then it is as if they are endorsing what the crooked traders are doing.

After all, the banks profit from these." Muhammad Sha ’ani addressed several issues at a Press conference yesterday at the NCCC operations centre.

He also highlighted the ease of purchasing fuel with credit cards without the need for any authentication to prove that the user is the actual card holder.

He claimed that in 2007 there were 809 complaints of lost credit cards and the number increased to more than a thousand last year.

"In almost all of these cases, the victims ’ credit card statements displayed excessive fuel purchases.

"We are proposing the requirement of passwords or PIN numbers when purchasing petrol with credit cards as a form of added security for consumers," he said, adding that NCCC would send the proposal to Bank Negara this week.

He also suggested that the merchants involved in credit card fraud should be investigated to put the brakes on more scams.

"There are laws to punish these cheats but there has to be more enforcement." Other suggestions in the NCCC ’s proposal is the prohibition of credit card recruitment by third parties other than licensed banks.

"This way, banks will not be able to shift the blame to third parties if credit card users are only recruited by their own people," said Muhammad Sha ’ani.

The NCCC, formed in 2004, is an initiative between the Consumer Research and Resource Centre, the Consumer Association of Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. and the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Mmistry. It adopts a cheeky tagline, "NCCC Now everyone can complain".

Joseph Kaos Jr
Malay Mail,
Malaysia

Credit card fraud hits $2m

THE discovery of counterfeiting machinery on the Gold Coast and the arrest of 10 people this week is linked to the same Malaysian criminal syndicate as another 10 people taken into custody late last year, say police.
The largest credit card fraud operation ever detected in Queensland was dismantled during the week after police arrested the three suspects on the Gold Coast and seven in Brisbane, in connection with what they allege is a multi-tiered, international illegal enterprise.
Almost 200 fake, blank credit cards, the counterfeiting machinery, stolen credit card details and computers were seized during a raid at a Southport home on Wednesday.
An examination of the equipment has so far retrieved the allegedly stolen details of almost 500 credit cards.
Police estimate the average loss from a compromised credit card account to be $4000 bringing the potential worth of the counterfeiting and fraud operation to $2 million dollars.
Police from the fraud and corporate crime group are expecting to retrieve more account details from the confiscated equipment.
They did not rule out further arrests.

Andrew Macdonald
Weekend Gold Coast Bulletin
Queensland,Australia

NCCC calls for newguidelined to curb credit card fraud

KUALA LUMPUR: TheNational Consumer Complaints Centre (NCCC) has urged Bank Negara to introduce new guidelines for banks to curb credit card fraud.

NCCC chiefexecutive, Muhammad Sha ’aniAbdullah, said the number of cases involving credit card fraud and loss of credit cards at pump stations nationwide exceeded 1,000 last year compared to 809 in 2007. "For example, fraud cases at pump stations happen because there are no security characteristics when users pay using credit cards.

"They only need to swipe without entering pin numbers or passwords.

Hence, people can easily use credit cards belonging to others without any confirmation or passwords when maldng transactlons7 he told reporters here yesterday.

He said banks should require their customers to use passwords when maldng credit card trasactions at pump stations, online and on the phone. Sha ’ani said Bank Negara should also disallow a third party from applying for credit cards on the behalf of others.

Eastern Times,
Sarawak,Malaysia