Motorists hit by card clone scam

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Thousands of motorists who use a bank card to buy petrol are thought to have lost millions of pounds in a scam allegedly linked to Tamil rebels.

It is believed cards are being skimmed at petrol stations, whereby the card details and pin numbers are retrieved and money withdrawn from the account.

About 200 of the UK's 9,500 petrol stations are thought to have been hit.

The Sri Lankan government has claimed its opponents, the Tamil Tigers, are behind the scam.

Police are investigating complaints made in Edinburgh, Norwich, Bury St Edmunds, Peterborough, Nottingham, Leeds, Bristol and Hull.

In Hull, the economic crime section of Humberside Police are checking thousands of receipts for fuel bought with credit or debit cards at one petrol station.

Detective Inspector Paul Welton, of Humberside Police, said "Quite clearly this was well-organised and it was done on an international basis."

Those alleged to have been involved were able to obtain card details and pin numbers and put them together to clone the cards, police said.

The site in Hull is now under new management, and the new owners are not linked to the police inquiry.

Sean Gillespie, one of thousands of possible victims, noticed his bank account was being emptied of small amounts over weeks, amounting to thousands of pounds.

"I knew how much had been taken but how it was taken was an absolute mystery to me," he told BBC News.

'Arms funding'

Most of the UK's petrol stations are independently run which means they are susceptible to being infiltrated by organised crime.

And the Sri Lankan Government believes it is the Tamil Tigers who are using threats to coerce innocent Sri Lankans to take part in the scam.

They say Tamil asylum seekers arriving in the UK are loaned money to open a petrol station, and once established they supply information to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Maxwell Keegel, first secretary of the Sri Lankan High Commission in London, said: "They extract the pin and details from the cards and within minutes this information is sent to LTTE agents who operate in remote parts of the world, as far away as Thailand and Indonesia.

"And the money goes unwittingly from people's accounts and ends up going into the LTTE's arms activities."

The petrol industry accepts it is a problem.

Some retailers have already replaced all their chip and pin machines, while some consumers are only using cash to buy petrol.

Nick Vandervell, of the UK Petroleum Industry Association, said "We are working with the independent retailers but it is difficult to tell them what to do."

Reply to
Tom Bradbury
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Incredible the number of people who think they just must post news articles they haven't written themselves !!! Not a comment, which would be OT anyway, not a mind for themselves, crosspost is preferable, and let us compete between evleth (the mother of all spammers), martin, michaelnewport aka crapman, morrow and a few others. What drives these people to act like that? Old age ? Sense of uselessness ? No one to tell them they are brave and beautiful ?

"Tom Bradbury" a crit dans le message de news: xTmWh.2379$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe3-win.ntli.net...

Reply to
Runge1

I agree with you, the link would say it all. Having said that top posting is not viewed as polite on newsgroups, so as in life, no one is perfect ;-)

Reply to
Gio

Surely it must raise (hopefully very loud) alarm bells if a card is used in quick succession in two widely separated locations. As it is claimed that the PIN is captured, this implies that the fraud involves cardholder present transaction (or withdraw from ATMs) using a cloned magnetic stripe card. As the same card cannot legitimately be in two places at once or be moved too rapidly from one place to another, should this type of fraud not be easier to detect than CNP frauds?

Reply to
Graham Murray

It would make life difficult if, for example, you filled your car up in Leeds, jumped on a couple of planes and then used your card to get some cash in Bombay twelve hours later...

And yes, it is possible, just...

Reply to
William Black

ws:

The link is there to prove the validity of the article I prefer to have both, then I can read it without opening another window. But I never reply to scRunge because he is worthless.

Reply to
sLuGhUnTeR

I have had credit card transactions questioned by my 'Goldfish' credit card company before now because I have used it to fill up on route from and to Scotland to the south of England, so for whatever reason either my account was being watched or the locations where purchases were made. It was not as though a tank fill up was a large amount.

Reply to
Gio

My friend had a transaction on his bounced for being in a second country less than an hour later!

But I do think that it should be possible to pick up odd transactions in Asia, very few people go back and forth that far every 2 days

tim

Reply to
tim.....

And who rocked your boat you miserable old fart ? :-)

>
Reply to
Tommy

Reply to
Frank F. Matthews

Make credence recognised that on Sat, 21 Apr 2007 13:50:03 +0100, Graham Murray has scripted:

Lloyds TSB cancelled one of my credit card when I flew into Hong Kong. They could have called me before doing this, but they didn't.

When I finally got through to them, they said the process to reactivate the card could take a few days.

Great, so you can f*ck it up easily, but you can't unfuck it without a great effort. I changed banks after that.

Reply to
Deeply Filled Mortician

You never reply to anyone and if I had to read a comment some day by michaelnewport, I would quickly go scrub my eyes with soap !! No fear, michaelnewport has strictly nothing to say, whether on topic or out of topic. Anyone can verify that. To prove he exists, he pollutes with articles and viruses.

"sLuGhUnTeR" a crit dans le message de news: snipped-for-privacy@e65g2000hsc.googlegroups.com... >

The link is there to prove the validity of the article I prefer to have both, then I can read it without opening another window. But I never reply to scRunge because he is worthless.

Reply to
Runge1

LOL GO BACK TO SLEEP. WHEN I WHISTLE, YOU JUST RUN OUT OF UNDER THE BED.

"Tommy" a crit dans le message de news: R_oWh.2394$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe3-w>> Incredible the number of people who think they just must post news

Reply to
Runge1

Unless they are daft enough to use the cards immediately, that probably won't flag up as suspicious on many cards and, if it does, it will be a toss-up as to whether a real transaction or a fraudlent one trips the flag. In any case, given enough cards, losing a few to suspicious transactions won't matter much.

Except that two of my online customers appear to have had their cards cloned as part of this. Fortunately for them, one did not work and the other looked wrong, so I investigated it in more depth, decided to refuse the sale and wrote to the customers about it - the only reliable information being the cardholder's address. In those cases, the cards were used from London.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
nightjar

What's wrong with that? Pakistanis have been running corner shops here for years.

Reply to
Tom Bradbury

The card scams are certainly happening. But I wonder if the Sri Lanka embassy is blaming some Tamil opposition in the UK as a way of getting at them, getting the police on their backs.

If the Tamil Tiger claims came from a more neutral source than the Sri Lanka embassy I would be more convinced.

Reply to
RAK

Exactly the same happened to me, I was stuck in Amsterdam over a long weekend with no cash, loads of associated aggro, I used ATM's and fuel outlets I had used many times before but this came up on their computer as possibly fraudlent. Their attitude was unbelievable, their final advice being I should get a friend or relative to Western Union me some money. I have just changed my bank and have a current claim in the County Court against the Halifax Bank for wrecked weekend plus compensation.

Reply to
NM

What are you talking about?

Reply to
Alan Holmes

"Deeply Filled Mortician" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Most of them, yes.

Those that aren't do rather tend to be Bangladeshi rather than Pakistani.

Reply to
William Black

Are they?

Why?

Reply to
Alan Holmes

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