Credit Card Fraud

[peewee]

I am writing with regard to warning other readers and French bank account holders in that I have had problems with my French Bank.

I opened a joint account with my wife Jo approximately four years ago after purchasing a small property in limousine. We deposited 10000 Euro in this account to pay for bills, Taxes and the general running costs of the property.

In the September of 2006 we received a phone call from our French bank the first contact that we had had with the bank in the previous three years and my wife was told that the account was 1500 Euro overdrawn. My wife was amazed at this as was I .

I immediate checked the last statement and discovered that the account should have been 5000 Euros in credit, We had however not received a statement for some time May 2006 in fact, this was not unusual as we never used the account in the U.K. and only ever received statements after a withdrawal. I then telephoned our French bank  to request up to date statements. These I received 2 -3 days later. On inspection I discovered that all of the monies in the account had been withdrawn over a two month period from June 2006 through to August 2006 within the U.K. amounting to nearly 141 Euros a day. We then contacted our French bank stopping the account and contacted the Police who duly took details and statements.

To cut a long story short the police passed the information on to the fraud squad who investigated the withdrawals and after a time we where told that My wife’s card had been Cloned. It turned out that Jo had used the card to withdraw a small amount of cash at a local A.T.M. in New Milton and this must have been where it was Cloned. The police had been in contact with our French bank and duly sent the report to them directly.

As you can imagine we had been frantic with worry, so where somewhat relived after being told by our French bank that we would be reimbursed. This however is not now the case as we have just been informed 5^th Feb 2007 that our French bank are not going to reimburse us for our loss.

We are both stunned by this as we would like to know firstly why it was never brought to our attention earlier that the card was being used in an abnormal manner as would be the case in the U.K.

Secondly how the account was allowed to go overdrawn with no consent from me or my wife (I thought that this was illegal in France)

Why our French bank seem not to believe the British Police that the money was stolen.

Why it has taken 5 months for the bank to make a decision

We are very disappointed with the way that we have been treated by our French bank and so any advise that readers can give would be very gratefully received

 

[Ron Avery]

From what I can make out, your queries should be firmly and promptly addressed to your French bank, but I think you are applying UK rules and norms like unusual activity monitoring that quite frankly you cannot rely on in France.  Have you investigated an insurance claim on your French house insurance if your French bank refuse to reimburse you?

[toni]

Pee-wee, you might want to have a look at a previous thread  from last year in the Legal and Finance forum in which several other posters have experienced a similar problem with French bank cards being cloned in the UK!

[Quillan]

Moderators hat ON

The forums Code of Conduct does not allow naming and shaming. I do however think this post could be of general interest to many of our members. I have therefore edited the post (and all subsequent posts) to remove the name of the bank rather than delete the whole thread.

If you would like to know the name of the bank concerned then please PM or Email the original poster.

For those that do know the name of the bank concerned please can you refer to it as ‘the French bank’.

Many thanks in advance

The moderators team.

Moderators hat OFF

[peewee]

Hi Ron

As we have only just been made aware that the bank are not Going to pay out I am just trying to get some information if anyone within the forum had any similar problems and to whom if anyone could we complain.

Thanks for the input

Peewee 

[TreizeVents]

[quote user="Quillan"]

Moderators hat ON

The forums Code of Conduct does not allow naming and shaming. I do however think this post could be of general interest to many of our members. I have therefore edited the post (and all subsequent posts) to remove the name of the bank rather than delete the whole thread.

If you would like to know the name of the bank concerned then please PM or Email the original poster.

For those that do know the name of the bank concerned please can you refer to it as ‘the French bank’.

Many thanks in advance

The moderators team.

Moderators hat OFF

[/quote]

You missed this one  http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/870041/ShowPost.aspx 

Is the French bank a bit like the Scottish Play?

 

[Dick Smith]

That link isn't being critical or naming and shaming, though.

[Miki]

Not so sure Dick, plenty of criticism there and rightly so. If one has had bad service from a national bank/company, we all need to know, well I know I would. As for individual small builders, well a little different, for obvious reasons. Read the money pages in the Nationals and see how many financial institutions get a battering for damned awful customer relations.

 

I have been on to my bank  today to get charges taken off (again) they did, so fair play but the bottom line is, they should not have been levied in the first place !

I think one should be able to offer fair criticism, it's just that too often sometimes Moderation isn't exactly equal.

[Dick Smith]

No argument from me on that front.

[Russethouse]

FWIW, the other thread mentioned seems to be about internet banking and the limitations of some French banks sites in the users opinion where as this thread is specifically critical of one bank.  IMHO . 

[Llwyncelyn]

I am perhaps known for having somewhat strong opinions...............?  Here it is no different in that the Rights of Access to this Forum are set out in the Code of Conduct and to which we all sign up.  Thus the T's and C's are there for us to read and digest.  If we do not accept what is put in front of us then the alternative is not to 'play the game' and 'play the game with another team.'

However my personal opinion and for what worth (fww a banking term) is that without pressure public exposure or whatever how are we as paying public (as in fees and costs and other ways that the banks dream up to part us from our money) going to highlight what is actually going on?  Hence the week end supplements which quite rightly in my opinion attack and highlight inefficiences of the banks.

Here I was quite laid back as to the banks but no longer I  review almost weekly what is going on especially after an error that put me 8000 euros overdrawn when the exercise was to transfer that amount from deposit to current!

We must as a caring society feel sorry for the original contributor and let us hope whatever bank plays ball and the money is refunded.  However 10000 euros is a lot of money for day to day expenses and I wonder whether it would have been better that the money had been placed on deposit and drip fed to the current account?

Finally we all contribute one way or the other be it by magazine subscription to Archant and thus contribute to shareholder value?  Seemingly the object of any or all of the exercises is to provide information support and background to those of us who are thinking or live in France.

Thus and this is not a very intelligent thought but driven by my views of the injustice that occurs between mankind that Archant should carry 'the banner' for us and if and only if injustice is seen to have occured and could be reasonably argued that I do not see why name and shame should not be carried out.

Obviously the vehicle for this is Archant and that is the rub and behind Archant is an army of lawyers!

I hope this is a balanced posting...........probably not.

rdgs

[allanb]

[quote user="Ron Avery"]From what I can make out, your queries should be firmly and promptly addressed to your French bank, but I think you are applying UK rules and norms like unusual activity monitoring that quite frankly you cannot rely on in France.[/quote]Peewee: I sympathize, but I think Ron is right, although I don't think it applies only to France.  "Unusual activity monitoring" is a fairly vague concept (how exactly do you define unusual?) and you can't completely rely on it anywhere, although obviously some banks will do a better job than others.

I know this is shutting the stable door after the horse has gone, but I really believe that it's worth the fee to have on-line banking so that you can check your card accounts often.  You won't prevent someone cloning your card and misusing it, but at least you'll be able to block the card and inform the bank quickly, and that's more than half the battle.

It's now a fact of life that there are ways of cloning your card and stealing your PIN.

[Will]

I think you have hit on the basic problem with naming and shaming on a forum like this, Llwyncelyn. I have never worked directly for Archant, but have done for several other publishers, and they do not have an army of lawyers. Not even the biggest (at the time) magazine publisher in Britain, IPC (then owned by Reed Elsevier), which got taken for six figure damages after a rather dubious defamation case involving a sister title to one I worked on. Magazines, in general, do not expect to get involved in such disputes (with obvious exceptions like Private Eye) whereas the nationals do.

Based on my experience I suggested to the mods that they might like to look at this thread - not that, in my layman's opinion, there had been anything defamatory in the original posting. The real problems arise in the subsequent discussions when somebody might unwittingly make a comment like 'XX bank are a load of fraudsters and charlatans' - and once the conversation reaches that point, Archant is in potentially serious trouble. That was the basis of the case referred to above. It was not the fact that a company's claims had been proved to have been exaggerated more than somewhat - it was an inference in the magazine's test report that by exaggerating them, the directors were being fraudulent. Although arguably in the case of this particular French bank even that statement could be defended.

A comparatively small publisher like Archant is in an invidious position in a case like this. An individual might get away with a slight defamation, but a court may well find that Archant should be big enough, and knowledgeable enough about the law, to take steps to prevent libel or defamation, whereas in reality it may not have the resources to do that. So it cannot afford to take chances.

And with that in mind, I think on this occasion the moderators acted perfectly reasonably in deciding to edit the posts. Even though there may not have been any actual defamation, and people will no doubt argue this point ad infinitum because, as I am sure Llwyncelyn will agree, the law is somewhat flexible on this point, the forum's own rules on 'naming and shaming' were clearly breached (my emphasis). It's Archant's forum, they make the rules, we agree to abide by them, so that should be the end of the story.

[Lori]

Very informative post.  Can someone tell me exactly how a card is cloned?  And, how do they get your PIN number?  I would think this would be difficult.  I have heard about Distributor Machines being fitted with card receptors (that fit over the normal bank receptor) and keep your card.  Normally done outside banking hours and then the cards are collected by the theives.  Even so, how do they then get your PIN number?  Is there some sort of illegal camera put there?  And what happens to the normal bank camera that is located at the Distributor Machine?  Wouldn't that show the criminal?

It would be helpful to know this type of information in trying to protect ourselves.

 

 

[Will]

Separately from the above, because this is my personal view rather than something to do with forum rules, I do of course sympathise with the original poster, and think that the bank's attitude, based on what we have been told, is nothing short of scandalous. Maybe it is worth involving the 'investigation' section in the money pages of a weekend paper like the Telegraph or Times - after all they do a lot to promote housebuying in France so they should warn of pitfalls like this too.

It does highlight the fact that one does have to take the utmost care of cards, not just online and in cash machines but when using them in stores and ordering over the phone, when it is even easier for the unscrupulous to 'steal' the necessary card details and personal information. It is also worth pointing out that most French cards are debit cards, and I think I am right in saying that they have less protection for the user than credit cards, at least in Britain. And I agree about the potential difficulty of keeping track of movements in a French account.

[Will]

[quote user="Lori"]

Can someone tell me exactly how a card is cloned?  And, how do they get your PIN number?  I would think this would be difficult.  [/quote]

This link from the BBC  might help, it's not detailed, for obvious reasons, but shows it can be done.

False fronts are sometimes fitted to cash machines, petrol pump machines etc which have cameras and magnetic sensors that can record card details and the pin number used. It's not always possible to pick this up on the security cameras if the fraudsters can block the view - they may, if skilful, look just like normal customers using the machine.

[Bugsy]

Following on from Wills comments, the best advice from all this is

1.Always cover the hand that is tapping in your pin number with your other hand.

2. Never throw away slips from card transactions (shread or burn).

[Ron Avery]

Lori

As I understand it, with a bank ATM as opposed to a PIN reader, which reads the data in the chip, a device is put in the ATM by a crook next to the slot, this device scans and reads the magnetic code strip data on the card and the code input on the key pad of the ATM either by using a small camera recording the key strokes or the device reads them like spyware does on a PC.  This information is transmitted to the crooks who make a copy magnetic strip and use the cloned card very quickly before any unusual activity can be detected.  If the card is regularly used in France and the UK, then such "continued use" would not be detected as unusual anyway.  Some credit cards like Nat West put a limit on spending " abroad" but this can lead to problems like many have had in Calais when their credit card is refused at the cheque out in Cite Europe.  Its not just debit cards that you have to be wary of, this morning on the BBC they reported that a Swedish bank had millions of kronas taken from customers accounts by crooks hacking into the bank's computer and stealing the account numbers and passwords.  The latest thinking is to combat random word producers that can break most account passwords in seconds, HSBC in the Far East is producing key fobs that generate a new password entry number with every transaction so that  cloned card and password cannot be used .  My advice to Pee-wee would be to follow up with the French bank, but also get in touch with the UK Police and the bank that the money was taken from by his O/H, as they hold some responsibility if the UK police believe that the card was cloned using their ATM.  Also ask to see the Police report, for all you know the UK police may have said that no evidence was found of a cloning devoce, as I know Sunday Driver will confirm,  8 out of 10 alleged fraudulent withdrawals are found to have been done by the cardholder or a family member, not suggesting anything of the sort in your case of course, but it is that mind set that Police work from, ie it is more than likely it was done by the card holder unless there is clear evidence of tampering with the ATM,  so ask the French bank and the UK police, if they had detected a reader on the ATM, that explanation must have come from somewhere.

IMO,  the most likely source of card data being copied is still a restuarant or similar where the card is taken out of your sight for processing, that is why you should never let your card out of your sight.

EDIT - Removed bank name.

[Will]

Another thing - having just received some in the post - is be very careful with those credit card cheques that your card issuer may give you to transfer balances or add money to bank accounts. Apart from the fact that they can attract quite high interest if you use them, just throwing away is an open invitation to fraud. Make sure you rip them up or shred them.

[TreizeVents]

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[Quillan]

[quote user="Ron Avery"]

HSBC in the Far East is producing key fobs that generate a new password entry number with every transaction so that  cloned card and password cannot be used . 

[/quote]

Actually this system has been around for about ten years now. It consists of a key fob or credit card size piece of electronics that creates a new password every time you want to login. It is synchronized with a similar piece of kit at the their end. The problem is that it can get out of sync for many reasons but the most common is because the user forgets to press the button to create the next password. A newer design is a USB dongle which is unique to the individual and also changes it's password every time you login but then it synchronises other information with the secure server.

The problem with this is different operating systems (Windows 95/98/2000/XP) some require drivers and others don't. The idea is to make the ability to access whatever to be portable so that’s why operating systems are a problem. The more common use for these types of devices is for remote users lodging in to their company’s network over the internet to collect emails etc. It is a 99.99% secure system and used by certain 'government agencies'. In this case it is all setup the companies IT department before the kit is handed over to the user plus all the kit will be the same.

Personally I always thought for shop use that having you photo on the card was a good idea and has been around for year yet no credit. debit card company ever took it up (to my knowledge). I have to say in France my wife and I often swap cards (funny enough she seems to get mine more than I hers [:(] ) and providing you know the number your OK as nobody ever checks.

 

[Sunday Driver]

Reading the original post, there are some issues that may go towards understanding the bank's position.

You are an account holder who is resident in the UK, so withdrawals from a UK ATM would not necessarily cause the bank to query this as an unusual transaction.  Overdrafts are not illegal in France - you may actually find you were given an authorised limit when you originally opened the account. 

You say that you only ever received statements after a withdrawal.  In that case, the unauthorised daily withdrawals between June and August 2006 would have generated statements which would have alerted you to the situation. 

This raises two possible scenarios - firstly, this would have allowed you to mitigate the bank's potential loss by identifying the missing monies and reporting it to them straight away.  By not having done so, it could be argued that you were negligent in this respect.  A second scenario is that you discovered that your card had been cloned (from your first exceptional statement) and decided to say nothing, and start to withdraw some of your own money and claim it was all down to the cloners.

By their very nature, bank fraud investigations do take time and it's not unusual for such a delay to occur where there are difficult circumstances to investigate and reach a conclusion.  You do not say what the bank's reason was for refusing to reimburse your loss.

 

 

[Lori]

Thanks Ron, that is very informative.

It does seem interesting that different banks seem to have different procedures. 

Now I am SO careful each time I use my ATM card.

 

[peewee]

After three years of holding the account with no withdraws outside of france I woud find that the withdrawl of 140 euros a day a little fishy to say the least. As to the bank statements we never recieved a statement in all of the time that the card was used fraudulantly, acording to the police this is common, why and how I do not know,

I understand that the banks have to look at every possibility and that card fraud may be an exception in France ( It wont be!)  I would be interested  to read your comments when it happens to you.

I can assure you that the fraud officer that spoke to us had had full training in spotting a tampered with ATM His advice was to get cashback .

 

peewee

[Russethouse]

peewee, How many statements have you had during the three years of having this account ? Was the fact that you received a statement after a withdrawal just coincidence ?

Have you got a copy of the original paperwork you had with the terms and conditions of this account. What does it say regarding fraud and frequency of statements?

Sunday Driver is just putting the other side of the picture, if you understand the banks view and priorities it may be easier to reach a satisfactory conclusion.