Victim of thieves? It’s on the cards
SoMe weeks ago, my wife used her credit card at a local supermarket. As she was loading her shopping into the car, a woman distracted her and my wife drove off, unaware that a man had opened the boot to steal her credit cards from her purse. This was captured on ccTv. Three hours later, my wife got a text from one of her credit card companies asking if she’d just bought £1,000 of goods at a London store. We spotted her cards were missing and cancelled all of them, but by then the thieves had used my wife’s cards to obtain £8,000-worth of cash and goods. I asked the credit card companies for details of where the cards were used. one refused, saying it wasn’t allowed to under the Data Protection Act, but the other bank gave me a full list of the times, locations and amounts charged with the stolen card. I contacted the stores where the goods were bought, giving them the card number, time, location and amount spent, but none would provide a copy of the purchase receipt, or any details of what had been bought. I asked the supermarket to check its ccTv and it identified the thieves watching my wife enter her PIN at the till and the man stealing credit cards from my wife’s bag. They agreed to keep the ccTv for the police. I visited the ATM machines used by the thieves, one at a garage. It agreed to copy the ccTv recording and give it to the police, but the company which owned the ATM wouldn’t even confirm if its machine had ccTv. Another ATM was at a bank — and the bank refused to give its ccTv recording to the police, saying its internal fraud investigators would handle it. After we reported the cards stolen, a large purchase at a London store was refused and the credit card retained by the store. There should be ccTv available at the store. The bank credit card fraud investigators said similar thefts happen all the time but they have no access to any of the ccTv footage. They said the police were no longer investigating the matter and are interested in it only as a statistic. I’ve seen groups of people at my local supermarket observing other customers. Several times, these groups have walked together to the tills when a vulnerablelooking customer went to pay for shopping. each time I saw this, I alerted the security staff, and when the people saw the security staff approach, they immediately headed for the exit, leaving their shopping behind. I’ve also seen a constant stream of people using a huge number of credit cards in an attempt to withdraw cash from the ATMs. They seem to be trying various number combinations until either money is dispensed or the card is retained by the ATM. I watched one couple try to use 20 cards, most of which were retained by the machine. At one supermarket, a woman parked her car at the far end of the car park and groups reported to her to hand over what looked like credit cards. every so often, a motorcycle arrived and collected a package from the woman. It looked to me as if she was operating an organised credit card fraud. Next time you’re in your supermarket, look around to see what’s happening.
Name and address supplied.