$40.5m swindled from customers by ATM fraudsters

[stikid09]

The Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) says there were close to 1,700 reports of credit card and other card fraud in 2017 to the tune of TT$40.5 million. The revelation yesterday prompting Joint Select Committee chair on the Cybercrime Bill, Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi, to note that the disclosure in the cyber-crime environment “tells a tale of our country and the risks we are facing.”

Appearing before the JSC yesterday, Acting Deputy Commissioner of Police Harold Phillips reported on successes the TTPS has had under the Computer Misuse Act and the Electronic Transfer of Funds Act.

He said under the Electronic Transfer of Funds Act there were a number of offences “from fraudulent use of credit cards, trafficking in counterfeit cards, possession of card making equipment, obtaining goods by false pretences using false, expired or revoked cards and theft or retaining possession of cards.”

In 2017, he said the number of reports of card fraud was “1,694 reports and the dollar value for those reports would have been totalling $40.5 million.”

Phillips said the police undertook several prosecutions for fraudulent use of cards, trafficking in counterfeit cards as well as possession of card making equipment and “in these prosecutions sometimes one person would be prosecuted for more than one offence.”

The data so far, he said, indicates that there were 78 prosecutions. Phillips also pointed to the reports this year where persons were putting in empty envelopes into fast deposits and “getting sums of money credited to their account and monies were withdrawn by these persons.” He said most of the cases were recently reported and the police had started investigations “and we have been successful in a few prosecutions so far.”

For the year so far, Phillips said there had also been a substantial number of reports that focused on persons either responding to emails, whereby they indicated that they needed to supply identification information with respect to banks, and in fact, their accounts were hacked.

He said the police continue to get reports of the fraudulent use of credit cards and has received 747 such reports to date. Phillips said so far there have been 81 prosecutions under the Computer Misuse Act. On the Cybercrime Act, the TTPS is proposing that cybercrime offences be included in the first schedule of the recently proclaimed Anti-Gang Act.

Asked by committee member Barry Padarath what prompted the request, Acting Assistant Superintendent Kerwin Francis said fraudsters operate like gangs.

“There are persons who may be generating fraudulent bank cards, there are persons employed in a restaurant you may go with your credit card, that person may swipe your card, then that data is handed over to John Doe who may have the software and the blank cards upon which he can now impregnate that data from your credit card,” Francis said.

Francis said the activity of the employee at the restaurant, when married with the conduct of the individual putting the data on the blank cards, brings them within the realm of gang activity.

“Under the Anti-Gant Act, two or more persons coming together whether formally or informally to engage in a gang-related activity.”

He said by putting the cybercrime offences under the first scheduled of the Anti Gang Act, “these two persons can now be charged for being members of gang and the person leading the activity can be charged as a gang leader and then the follow-on with provisions under the legislation that deals with forfeiture of equipment etcetera.”

Asked whether there were high instances of this happening, Francis said he was aware that the Fraud Squad “does receive a number of reports outlining that sort of conduct.”

The TTPS has promised to provide data to the JSC.

Al-Rawi said police data was critical, telling Phillip, “You gave us a submission which was immensely important, $40m of transactions in the cybercrime environment and thousands of matters, that tells a tale of our country and the risks we are facing.”

He urged the committee to lean on the Fraud Squad if necessary to get the data which is critical in “exposing the mischief” of cybercrime and the economic impact.

Al-Rawi also asked the police to provide data on allegations of death or physical harm which may have been caused in a cyberbullying environment and data on allegations of domestic violence which occur in the cyber environment. Phillip admitted the police do get some of that through social media.

Source: http://www.cnc3.co.tt/press-release/405 ... fraudsters

[RedVEVO]

^^

People need to check bank statements almost every week / maybe every day.

That is if you are online .

The Banks in TT have been lying to YOU for years !

They hide any suspicious transactions .

They blame YOU the customer if there is a mistake in their system.

Security @ Banks is low .

How many employees to date have been charged with fraud ?

You only know about the reported ones .

BATT hides everything from the public.

[MarlonSam]

Wouldn't be surprised if the banks are behind some of these fraudulent transactions.

[RedVEVO]

Wouldn't be surprised if the banks are behind some of these fraudulent transactions.

No no no ...

The Banks is not behind any fraud.

There are bank systems in place that fraudsters are able to circumvent .

It's bad management in place and a no care attitude .

[Gem_in_i]

The Banks treat you like the criminal when you make the report. Couple yrs ago with my CC I had to pay the bank to investigate my issue. I also had to pay off the CC amount and would be refunded after their investigation. .

[RedVEVO]

The Banks treat you like the criminal when you make the report. Couple yrs ago with my CC I had to pay the bank to investigate my issue. I also had to pay off the CC amount and would be refunded after their investigation. .

Banks are the new white color gangsters

[aaron17]

So they hacking those who are doing online banking?

[mero]

The Banks treat you like the criminal when you make the report. Couple yrs ago with my CC I had to pay RBC to investigate my issue. I also had to pay off the CC amount and would be refunded after their investigation. .

that bank is sheit lol.

Once a possible fraudulent cc transaction is under dispute you not supposed to pay it off first .

[maj. tom]

yeah that's probably illegal if the bank doing that. VISA protects the customer from fraud. Unless our law-schemers put a loophole on purpose, that's VISA's policy.

"With Visa's Zero Liability Policy you won't be held responsible for unauthorized charges."
https://usa.visa.com/support/consumer/security.html#3

[SLVR1]

RBC never did that to me. Those transactions that compromised my card were noted and the legit transactions put on to my new card. I did not have to pay a cent.

[VexXx Dogg]

RBC doing that?
LOL

FCB sort me out brisk, no charges for me for the compromise in the UK which was about 4k TT iirc

[RedVEVO]

The Banks treat you like the criminal when you make the report. Couple yrs ago with my CC I had to pay RBC to investigate my issue. I also had to pay off the CC amount and would be refunded after their investigation. .

RBC is sheit lol.

Once a possible fraudulent cc transaction is under dispute you not supposed to pay it off first .

Nero Mero what you smoking today with that roti and smoke herring you eating for breakfast ?

You are allowed to pay off the CC anytime .

The transactions that YOU question or want investigated will be isolated .


** ah so hungry now - smoke herring so yummy with roast bake and hot lime pepper
And with a beast cold mauby or sorrel drink. And then some banana bread .

[88sins]

& how much was swindled from customers by the banks themselves?

[mero]

The Banks treat you like the criminal when you make the report. Couple yrs ago with my CC I had to pay RBC to investigate my issue. I also had to pay off the CC amount and would be refunded after their investigation. .

RBC is sheit lol.

Once a possible fraudulent cc transaction is under dispute you not supposed to pay it off first .

Nero Mero what you smoking today with that roti and smoke herring you eating for breakfast ?

You are allowed to pay off the CC anytime .

The transactions that YOU question or want investigated will be isolated .


** ah so hungry now - smoke herring so yummy with roast bake and hot lime pepper
And with a beast cold mauby or sorrel drink. And then some banana bread .

What does your response have to do what what I said?

Lol@ paying off the card anytime. See your suffering ass used to paying interest and your cc account going into arrears

[RedVEVO]

The Banks treat you like the criminal when you make the report. Couple yrs ago with my CC I had to pay RBC to investigate my issue. I also had to pay off the CC amount and would be refunded after their investigation. .

RBC is sheit lol.

Once a possible fraudulent cc transaction is under dispute you not supposed to pay it off first .

Nero Mero what you smoking today with that roti and smoke herring you eating for breakfast ?

You are allowed to pay off the CC anytime .

The transactions that YOU question or want investigated will be isolated .


** ah so hungry now - smoke herring so yummy with roast bake and hot lime pepper
And with a beast cold mauby or sorrel drink. And then some banana bread .

What does your response have to do what what I said?

Lol@ paying off the card anytime. See your suffering ass used to paying interest and your cc account going into arrears

You so sensitive

Drink some cold grape Koolaid

[dredman1]

Mastermind in online fraud scam nears freedom:

Evidence stolen from cops

by

Radhica De Silva
7 hours ago
Thu Dec 27 2018
ATM machine
ATM machine

The main sus­pect, be­lieved to have scammed hun­dreds of peo­ple of their hard earned mon­ey through on­line fraud, may es­cape be­ing charged.

This af­ter valu­able ev­i­dence was stolen from right un­der the noses of the po­lice.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the ev­i­dence im­pli­cat­ing the sus­pect, was se­cret­ly re­moved while it was lodged with the T&T Fraud Squad.

The sus­pect was in cus­tody at the time it was re­moved. An in­ves­ti­ga­tion has since been launched to find out who stole the ev­i­dence.

The vic­tims of the bank fraud are cus­tomers of Sco­tia­bank, which in No­vem­ber, is­sued an ap­peal to all its cus­tomers not to re­veal con­fi­den­tial bank in­for­ma­tion elec­tron­i­cal­ly.

The 40-year-old sus­pect, who lives in the East-West Cor­ri­dor, is said to be the mas­ter­mind be­hind the on­line fraud rack­et us­ing soft­ware to ex­e­cute his heists.

Over the past few months, a spe­cial po­lice team was set up to deal with on­line fraud. The elite team con­duct­ed a probe in­to re­ports of phish­ing, a type of on­line fraud in which a cus­tomer is sent an il­le­git­i­mate e-mail from the “bank” ask­ing for cred­it card in­for­ma­tion.

The fraud­ster usu­al­ly di­rects the cus­tomer to what ap­pears to be the bank’s web­site with a sim­i­lar LO­GO and URL. Po­lice said crim­i­nals have re­moved mon­ey from ac­counts with­in a cou­ple of hours via phish­ing.

The source said af­ter the sus­pect was ar­rest­ed sev­er­al crit­i­cal pieces of elec­tron­ics in­clud­ing a lap­top and soft­ware were seized from the sus­pect’s premis­es.

The of­fi­cers ques­tioned the sus­pect for sev­er­al hours. The elec­tron­ics were then tak­en to the Cy­ber Crime and Analy­sis Unit but when the po­lice got there they were in­formed by the Cy­ber Crime of­fi­cers that the lap­top’s hard dri­ve was miss­ing.

Some­one ap­par­ent­ly un­screwed the bot­tom of the lap­top and took out the hard dri­ve which is an electro­mechan­i­cal da­ta stor­age de­vice that us­es mag­net­ic stor­age to store and re­trieve dig­i­tal in­for­ma­tion. All ev­i­dence had dis­ap­peared and the po­lice said with­out the ev­i­dence there is no proof to lay charges.

The sus­pect was charged with sev­er­al mi­nor of­fences un­re­lat­ed to the elec­tron­ic ev­i­dence that dis­ap­peared.

Last month, Sco­tia­bank T&T ad­vised its cus­tomers not to re­spond to a se­ries of unau­tho­rised text mes­sages be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed in the pub­lic do­main which re­quest­ed con­fi­den­tial bank in­for­ma­tion.

Say­ing the mes­sages were fraud­u­lent and con­sid­ered “phish­ing” Sco­tia­bank ad­vised clients to not re­spond to the texts, open at­tach­ments or click on links.

Say­ing the mes­sages should be delet­ed, Sco­tia­bank ad­vised that it will nev­er send un­so­licit­ed text mes­sages ask­ing for con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion such as an ATM pin.

Any­one who en­tered per­son­al in­for­ma­tion by click­ing on a link or sus­pect fraud­u­lent be­hav­iour was ad­vised to call 62-SCO­TIA (
627-2684
).

CNC3’s ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er Samp­son Nan­ton, who was the vic­tim of on­line fraud on De­cem­ber 21 in which his en­tire salary was wiped clean, said the re­cent ar­rest of a sus­pect and the re­moval of ev­i­dence was dis­tress­ing.

In a What­sapp mes­sage, Nan­ton wrote, “See­ing the re­spons­es of peo­ple fol­low­ing my post on what oc­curred to me, I have an even greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion for what the vic­tims go through.”

He added, “ Even as I write this I’m in a bank line over-hear­ing some­one com­plain­ing of the same thing. I’m grate­ful that my bank recog­nised there was a prob­lem in the first place and called me. But it’s sad to know that so many peo­ple are los­ing funds to crim­i­nals who re­al­ly don’t care about the im­pact it has on peo­ple’s lives. And while most banks even­tu­al­ly re­fund the vic­tims, some­times it takes so long that the im­pact is felt heav­i­ly.”

Nan­ton said he was hope­ful that the po­lice will get to the bot­tom of the scam soon and some re­al tough penal­ties will be giv­en to the per­pe­tra­tors as well.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/mastermi ... 663787f7ce

[pugboy]

Look like a rat eat the hard drive

[Gem_in_i]

Evidence walk away

[Dizzy28]

SMH!!!!

[redmanjp]

Man have ah officer friend on d inside

[roadhog]

Small thing. When he get off. They will just eliminate him from earth

[pete]

Man have ah officer friend on d inside

Or an officer is the one in charge.

[RedVEVO]

^^

Hard drive turn floppy

Gary will fix .

He likes action & rotts.