Postmen paid to steal bank cards

BENT Birmingham postmen are raking in £1,000 a week in a delivery round scam, a BBC investigation has discovered.

They are being recruited by a gang working in the West Midlands and London to steal people’s new bank cards and PINs.

BBC journalist Jonathan Gibson posed as a postman interested in working for the gang broadcast on Monday.

Secret footage showed a gang member boasting that he has already recruited postmen in Birmingham and the capital.

He explains how the gang fraudulently signs up for bank accounts in the names of people on the postmen’s delivery rounds.

Then he pays the posties to intercept letters containing the bank cards and PIN numbers – and return them to him. He says that the postmen get for a probe as much as £1,000 a week part in the fraud.

“If you open up a new account you’re going to get your card and you’re going to get your PIN, right?” says the gang member.

“That’s two letters. You intercept the letters, bring them back to us – and you get paid.”

He claims the gang has been doing it for 30 years and has worked with a number of postmen.

Royal Mail bosses the footage and say for their are examining they will work with the police to nab those responsible. This type of postal fraud is a crime estimated to cost the industry around £12.5 million per year.

Birmingham postal worker Paul Akuda helped a gang make £1.2 million by stealing cheque books in the post. He was jailed for seven years in 2014.

In all, 1,759 Royal Mail employees were sacked and prosecuted for stealing mail between 2007 and 2011. The BBC says the company declined to provide more recent figures.

Katy Worobec, head of fraud detection for UK Finance, said: “We’ve got a very good relationship with Royal Mail to help target these types of gangs and we’ve had some successes in the past.”

In a statement, the Royal Mail said: “We take all instances of fraud – alleged or actual – very seriously. Our security team is reviewing the programme’s findings as a matter of urgency and will continue our close and ongoing co-operation with the relevant law enforcement agency.”