Ebay, Gumtree & Autotrader Vehicle / Car Scams

[Annie-777]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

Cant react until its reported but the online sites actually know the fraudulant are there and are powerless to stop it as there are that many, so the difference is the banks don't know until the moneys gone but the ad sites know it happening right under there noses !!! So in my opinion are turning a blind eye

dixie2013 the matter is that online markets do warn about fraud, at least the German online-market I used did that! However I trusted the fact that I was transfering money to a corporate account! I thought banks in Britain are like banks in Germany! Not only online markets see the pattern but banks see patterns too! This is my point.

[Boycie]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

Some time back banks determined that their growth could be achieved by increasing the number of accounts they opened and held. I don't doubt that banks tick all the boxes and fulfil the regulations and they'll keep on doing it (some more than others) as long as it doesn't cause them any losses and, as all victims have discovered, their loss is of no concern to the bank (or anyone else).

In olden days (not so long ago) staff judged customers with caution and opening a bank account was quite an intimidating procedure. In fact not so long ago you couldn't hold accounts with more than one bank. Nowadays account opening staff are under pressure to handle volumes and they don't get credit for turning anyone away, so it's actually in their interest to help them through. If there's a queue down the road with people with the right bits of paper, that won't disturb the bank because they're covered. In life you don't keep repeating the same mistakes if it harms you, but it doesn't matter if it harms someone else.

It's no secret to anyone that banks are opening thousands of accounts against either fake or forged documents, or the accounts are opened up purely for use in fraud. Let me assure you that any reasonably intelligent member of staff can see them coming and indeed the bank I worked for even profiled fraudsters and we used to turn them down, simply because they all had the same characteristics. As long as banks suffer no loss there is no reason for them to care.

Why should anyone care ?

Once criminals have found easy access to bank accounts and they rarely open one at a time, the door is open to widespread money laundering and fraud. If you haven't correctly identified your customer, then money laundering legislation might as well be repealed because it is worthless, and this includes fraud against the state in the form of benefits and VAT, companies and UK and foreign citizens. Beyond that, terrorist funding is completely thwarted if you haven't identified an account owner. I know that gangs were actually bringing groups in to the UK simply so that bank accounts could be established for them and then taken over. I have news reports when on rare occasions these groups have been broken up.

I understand what you say dixie2013, but it isn't any excuse for a bank or an ad site that the problem is too difficult for them to address because, if it is, then the consequences for everyone are very serious and, as I have said before the consequences for the banks are potentially very serious too. A bank account is to the fraudster what a gun is to a mugger. I wouldn't find it hard to believe that they could be sold by scammers for several hundred pounds. I have also found two companies set up scammers, though I'm not quite sure why they set them up, but when they do that it's preparation for something much more ambitious.

In another fraud I came across in news reports recently a member of bank staff was disclosing card details to fraudsters and money was being drawn from around the world, including the Lebanon. Using fraud to effect transfers is a perfect way for terrorists to move money and, if we accept that the system is riddled with fraud, current legislation is woefully inadequate.

I've batied a lot of these scammers and only once can I recall ever speaking to one by phone, which makes me believe that most are poor English speakers but, in time they will improve and turn their attention to banks, who will be a much more lucrative source of income and the same rules that apply to opening accounts also apply to mortgages and other means to extract money from banks. More easily these fraudulent accounts are just waiting to collect money from the accounts of other customers and it only takes an insider to make internal transfers and your money is gone, and there are examples of that happening.

It's difficult to understand why people pay to place car adverts on ad sites but, when sellers wise up to how riddled with fraud they are and unattractive to buyers, it'll be too late. The same with banks. A system that's bust and can't be mended will become obsolete.

Mediocrity and incompetence shouldn't be aspirations for any company and if a bank cannot open an account properly it should take up farming.

[Annie-777]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

Dear Boycie the system is not obsolete, it is only that thes system is not there for the people ....
Whom is it for? That I leave as an exercise for the reader...

Liebe Grüße,
Annie

[Tools]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

In response to Buster Jack's post I posted this at SW the other day - an ebay recruitment scam that was sent to me via total jobs.com. I have a profile there even though I'm not looking for a job because I'm aware that many job offers are merely thinly disguised frauds and scams.




A Google search on the email address reveals what this scammer is after


http://www.wages.com.au/community-sp...using-manager/





The scammer will list items at attractive prices on a victim's ebay account and he'll make you believe he's posting out the goods so that you'll be fooled in to sending him the receipts when they come in. The punch line is that he won't have sent anything and your account will be charged back for all the sales you've made. At best your ebay account will be trashed and you'll have a lot of money to pay back to people who haven't received goods. At worst you'll be prosecuted for operating an ebay scam.


Effectively the scammer wants to steal money from you using your ebay account. It isn't a job at all.

I saw that the other day too and decided to "apply", here is the result so far

Me

I am very interested in this job, could you give me more details please and let me know what you would need from me.

LAD

G`day,
I have some very popular items, and I thought that eBay would be the best place to sell them and earn some money. For the beginning I will send to you just 1 item. If everything will be okay we will continue with more products. If you are interested in this collaboration, for start, you will receive £200 for each item sold plus your ebay/paypal selling fees(if you have £12 selling fees, you will receive £212) but if everything goes well, I will give you a bigger share. I will handle the shipping and handling personally so after the auction ends you must send me the shipping address of the winning bidder and within few hours from that point on, I will provide you the tracking number for the item, so you can send it to the winning bidder. There is a 14-day return period after the winner receives the item.

If you agree with everything I explained to you here, notify me, and I will send you the items so you can post them (item description + pictures)!

Reply me ASAP.
Thank You

Me

That sounds simple enough. Please send me the items you want me to list. Will I need descriptions etc?

LAD

Can you list an farm tractor ?

Me

Yes no problem I can list as much as you like I have 100% feedback.

See where we go from here

[Boycie]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

I've just posted up at SW the full script of an Autotrader UK scammer for information, and I note that they're setting up domains and email boxes more frequently. It isn't unreasonable to believe that it's in reaction to the work we're doing.

I had to chuckle when the scammers started photo-hacking the registration details from adverts they were using at Autotrader UK. As vehicle registrations are something I add to warnings at SW, and it's reasonable to assume it's something a buyer might Google, they're having to react. If what we do has no effect they could ignore us.

If they photo-hack all adverts then it's easy to know which ones to avoid.

[dixie2013]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

HERE'S AN UPDATE FROM escrow-fraud.com/search.php

IT MIGHT PREVENT SOMEONE FROM LOSING THERE MONEY!!!

For FRAUD or Suspected FRAUD sites ONLY
DISCLAIMER

Search for

Currently our databse search will ONLY do an EXACT MATCH search. It WILL search both the Site Name and the site URL (reported address) and the IP Address.
Also searches are case INSENSITIVE and it will do a wild card search. That means as long as it finds the combination of letters you typed in the exact order, regardless of case, it will return a result (if any exisit). Please note that just because a site is not list in this database, it does NOT mean that it is not a fraud. Please use caution. If you are unsure use our Forum or Feedback to get more information.

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[righty]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

Any bank habitually operating false bank accounts allowing these scams to operate will, I doubt, be able to escape a charge of money laundering AND ignorance is no plea because like solicitors you're expected to know your customer & by that I mean that you have thoroughly checked their ID

[Boycie]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

That's a marvellous bit of work dixie2013.

Are you a member of a forum where they apply to take down fraudulent websites, because if you aren't, I am and I'll be happy to pass those details on ?

I hasten to add that though the people who do this are known as 'site killers', they use completely legal and standard methods to apply for their eradication.

In dealing with these people every step of their operation needs to be put under pressure, from the adverts they post, the 'mule' accounts and mail boxes they use and also these fraudulent websites. I am baiting them in moderate volumes daily in various ways and disrupting them all along their scam process hoping it will have a cumulative effect and make them mistrust everyone.

@righty - what you say is quite correct but, for whatever reason it doesn't appear to be making any difference. Whether this is because the criminals have so many accounts to use they can afford to use them as 'one time only' I don't know, but I have been looking for instances where accounts have been used twice and haven't found one yet.

On a slightly different tack you may recall the so-called hacking incidents involving the branches of two major UK banks. I'm sure there was more to it than mentioned in the news story but, setting that aside, getting someone's money particularly on a large scale is just half the story. You can't walk out of the door with bags of cash and cashpoint limits what you can withdraw. To move the money out of the brach will require a CHAPS payment and that opens a new set of difficulties. The easiest way to do it is to transfer the money to readily established accounts set up in preparation. It's a natural progression for a criminal group who are used to setting up fraudulent accounts. How you get money to move sideways off accounts within a branch I leave to your imagination, but the risks posed by these accounts isn't just to customers. They still hadn't fully worked out how to move the money out of the bank and they only had a short time to do it, but if they'd been better informed the loss could have been much worse.

[Boycie]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/23556...ars-hard-time?

16 Jul 2014

Digital fraudster ‘tetereff' gets five years hard time

Police found compromised financial data, including utility bills and bank statements in numerous names on his computer equipment as well as "large numbers" of hard copy financial and identity documents.
The NCA believe he was using the stolen information to create sets of false ID packages to sell to criminals.

Selling stolen personal information on digital black markets is an increasingly common practice in cyber crime communities. Researchers at FireEye found Eastern European cyber criminals selling customer data stolen during a raid on US retailer Target in February.

To anyone who sees the volume of bank accounts the criminals control this is very obviously taking place on an organised and widespread basis and it has implication beyond simply fraud.

Another risk for banks and their customers is identity theft and as much as they and other organisations attempt to make all instances of identity theft the responsibility of the customer, very often it's their own systems, whether in not holding information confidentially or failing to scrutinise applications properly, at fault.

[dixie2013]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

all i do is goto escrow-fraud.com/search.php , then just copy and paste onto here , jst to add to your thread boycie (878 ) , i would imagine that if a victim informs the bank of a fradulant transaction (mule account ) and the bank does not close the account down and is used again well i am certain the second victim would be re-imbursed by the bank. Due to data (CRIMINAL ) PROTECTION LAWS i as a victim don't or won't know if the account used by the fraudsters was used before, only the police can obtain that information and with 3500 victims (as at jan 14) probably well over 4000 now ) will the authorities look at ALL BANK ACCOUNTS USED ??, AS YOU SAY BOYCIE THE FRAUDSTERS SEEM TO USE THE ACCOUNT ONCE BUT WHO KNOWS ??, My question to all users/readers of the thread including tools is as i have stated the bank has millions of accounts and they say "we didn't know it was going to be used for fraudulant purposes therefore sorry but go away please", so in other words there asses are covered , so what excuse can ebay/gumtree/autotrader use?? , they clearly know whats happening to USERS OF THERE SITES DAILY and clearly know its occuring right under there noses , they (AD SITES ) are AWARE that criminals are using there logo/trademark to gain the confidence of potential victims and ARE AWARE that FRAUD/MONEY LAUNDERING IS GOING TO HAPPEN EVEN BEFORE ITS TAKEN PLACE !! THAT SURLEY CAN'T BE RIGHT ?? AND ILLEAGLE???

[dixie2013]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

any bank habitually operating false bank accounts allowing these scams to operate will, i doubt, be able to escape a charge of money laundering and ignorance is no plea because like solicitors you're expected to know your customer & by that i mean that you have thoroughly checked their id

again are the authorities going to check how all fraudulant accounts were opened ?

Are the autrhorities going to see if the account was used for normal activity, ie paying bills etc like me and you would use it for ?

I would like for the police to give me the details of the person who opened the account were my money went so i could persue that person in the small claims court, maye just maybe one day that will happen or the fca make the banks compensate victims of all mule account activity, if that happened how quickly would we see the banks tighten up there account opening procedures as they will incurr recorded losses against fraud instead of the victim losing out

[Guest]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

There are some good and positive points here, and forgive me for stating the obvious but THIS is where the focus of all the attention of well-meaning people should be - remember the old adage "follow the money" ? This is the best place to hit and hurt fraudsters, to stifle & strangle their access to the money. Again, this is very obvious and in a way I am typing these words for ME to read as much as anyone else; I have focused my efforts on eBay and sometimes Gumtree but I have to accept that the net result has been the scammers have simply flooded the online vehicle sales websites with an ever increasing volume of fraudulent listings which presumably compensates for the increasing 'loss rate'. I can say with a fair degree of confidence that 'time windows' as I call them (referring to the life-expectancy of a scam listing) have shrunk overall and quite significantly at that. Whereas in April 2013 scammers posted 20 listings a day with each one lasting 8 hours, now they post perhaps 200 a day with each one lasting 4 hours. Many die within less than an hour, but the war is not being won.

So the best target must be the banking system, the flow-through of money, the means by which these organised crime gangs access their ill-gotten gains. You may be already thinking of "grannies" and "sucking eggs" but this may well be how I re-direct my own efforts in the future - not that I have much of an idea how to go about it. I'm reminded of one of my most un-favourite government regulatory bodies, the Financial Services Authority (now re-branded the Financial Conduct Authority) - I could write until tomorrow while spitting blood about their near-unimaginable incompetence over the past decade and more, but if I was in a position to bring about change I would strengthen the ties between the FCA and the NFIB (assuming such ties exist at all....) and beef up the levels of information exchange such that all UK banks would be forced to take a number of steps to clamp down on (for example) money laundering and usage of mule accounts. There should be individual and personal accountability at board level within the banks, with punitive fines imposed having a very direct impact on the salaries and bonuses of the decision-makers within those banks. At present I can see little evidence that fines (such as those imposed for LIBOR rigging etc) having any comprehensive and appropriate effect on the perpetrators. There needs to be a radical reform of the banking laws in ways that bring about individual complicity to perpetrate fraud, because the banks' "see no evil, hear no evil" attitude that they hide behind has simply got to be ended.

And I can't finish without mentioning my old chestnut The Fraud Act 2006, which I still believe is worded surprisingly well but suffers from a near catastrophic absence of enforcement.

>steps off soapbox<

[Tools]

Re: Ebay &amp; Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

The banking side of things is what I am currently dealing with, or trying to, I have made some good headway and contacts and met with the relevant people. Things are already under way in the background so diverting your efforts from what you do best," seeking" out the scams and reducing the exposure time to potential victims. Sadly as you know eBay, Gumtree and Auto Trader do not give reasons once the ads are taken down, the presence of your Facebook page, Blog and more recently the new
Scam Listings on Ebay, Gumtree and Autotrader

forum here, preserve those listings for future reference and searches.

[Boycie]

Re: Ebay &amp; Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

When a bank is put on notice that a bank account is involved in fraud or crime or, if for any reason the bank itself believes that the account is involved in crime or fraud, then it's primary responsibility is to submit a written report to a department of the police responsible for receiving those reports. A member of staff can themselves be personally prosecuted for not submitting a report if it is deemed that one should have been submitted. This can apply to a cashier, a manager or anyone who may have seen suspicious activity on the account.

Makes you wonder how it is that any illicit money ever gets through the UK banking system.

The first problem is that once a bank has submitted a report then strictly they have discharged their money laundering reporting responsibilities, and secondly, you can imagine the volume of reports being submitted and you might wonder if they are treated with any more effectiveness than the crime reports submitted by victims to Action Fraud.

I hasten to add that I'm not trying wind anyone up, but merely provide some idea of the system operating behind banks and the regulatory authorities, otherwise everyone's leaping to conclusions about what's actually happening.

When you contact the bank your aim then is to prompt the bank to issue a report that will eventually end up in a big pile of similar reports and the likelihood is the they'll be handled in priority in accordance with the amount involved. Under money laundering legislation they aren't required to close the account and indeed a victim's claims mary be impossible to substantiate and could potentially be malicious in purpose. I'm acting as Devil's Advocate here because, if the bank says that they have closed the account, the question then is why ? Though a bank has the right to close any account without reason at any time, some banks have faced a lot of problems when they tried closing what they believed to be 'mule accounts' without definitive proof, especially when many appeared to be foreign students from certain few countries. The dilemma to the bank then is that these accounts haven't lost them any money but, by taking action, they face negative publicity.

My own concern is that for transactions under amounts of say £100,000, the money laundering procedures aren't much more than another pointless form filling process in a bank clerk's life of form filling which is only likely to form part of an archive no one ever views.

To make matters worse, though I knew good reasons why it was done, the report went from the writer, not direct to the police but via the account manager, who knew most about the account, but who could and would have reasons not to harm the customers who he has to manage to progress his career, meaning he may have good reason not to do anything to harm the profitability of his accounts.

All is not completely lost dixie2013 because you are correct to state that the bank is most vulnerable if ever an account that it can be evidenced was reported as having been involved in crime/fraud is then subsequently involved in later similar acts, not only to a claim made against it by the later victim but potentially from prosecution if a report was not originally submitted.

It confuses matters more that the authorities state that money laundering is a crime punishable with up to a ten year prison sentence, suggesting that this applies to dupes in solved in money laundering too. It's a risk for dupes, but unlikely, as there would normally have to be some knowledge by the dupe of what they were involved in, and it's very difficult to distinguish between the two - a money launderer and a dupe.

It all boils down to whether or not the bank has chosen to recognise the initial victims contact as sufficient to make a report. I read somewhere, and I will have saved a link, that one UK bank alone shut down 25,000 accounts in a year and I'm a little sceptical of this, simply because it's recognised that the greatest cost to a bank is setting up an account, and any bank doing this, and telling the world, is advertising its own incompetence and inefficiency. Another factor working against a bank closing down customer accounts is that a person can barely exist in the modern world without a bank account - to receive a salary, benefits, set up standing orders and pay for an internet connection and, at that level, a significant part of the population would exist in a twilight economy. I'm not saying that it shouldn't happen, only that there is no evidence that this is happening.

The only thing I may have clarified is how imperfect the situation is, but the one thing for certain is that the only way to correct the problem is to stop these accounts being opened and purge the current ones from the system. My best analogy would be that trying to combat fraudulent accounts after they're opened is like complaining about shootings once society is full of guns.

Next week on Channel 5 8.00pm I believe that 'Undercover Sting' is on the topic of criminals supplying fake ID's and forged documents for use in fraud. The subject seems to be topical.

[Tools]

Re: Ebay &amp; Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

Next week on Channel 5 8.00pm I believe that 'Undercover Sting' is on the topic of criminals supplying fake ID's and forged documents for use in fraud. The subject seems to be topical.

This will most likely involve the Operation Amberhill team of Scotland Yard, one of which I speak with frequently. I am aware that they recently managed to arrest several individuals who had a "spare room" as a fake document production line. Upcoming changes to account opening, specifically with the use of biometric document checking technology and "score cards", should make it more difficult to open accounts using fake documents but I will reserve judgement on that claim.

The 25,000 accounts story you refer to is this one

https://www.bba.org.uk/news/press-re.../#.U8huSrGTJo8