Stolen Post Fraud

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markjay

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-41081396

There has been an epidemic of stolen letters containing bank cards in our area.... but sadly the police do not seem to have the resources to deal with low-level bank fraud.

Anyone else affected by stolen post fraud?
 
Gangs are paying postal workers £1000 a week to steal cards.
 
Thankfully, I've not been affected - so far.

As I understand it, the banks reimburse customers for fraud of this kind ??

As you say ...lesser resources to cope with this. Which actually means we all pick up the tab in the end.
 
Nothing new..... Been happening for decades.....

Sent from my EDI-AL10 using Tapatalk
 
I have had loads of stuff going for a walk , more so over the last year.

In my spare time i make stainless bits and bobs for some of the chaps on various bike forums , mainly spacers / washers etc.

They must feel like a stack of coins through the packaging hence their desirability for those with sticky fingers.

I have even had packages clean cut open and delivered empty :fail, others ripped open and some opened and resealed.

Everything now goes recorded , at extra cost , which seems to increase the chances of the people receiving their parts.

Kenny
 
I send documents via RM on a 'signed for' basis and nothing has gone missing yet.

However, I have just signed up to a provider who will provide me with the data I need electronically and the rest can be sent via PDF by email.

If I can make the soft copy stuff work I will be free from visiting the post office which will be nice as I won't have to mix with the ditherers and dawdlers.

I might miss the Mars bars though.
 
Nothing new..... Been happening for decades.....
Yes. I remember talking to someone who'd previously worked inside a sorting office. - He said that if it doesn't leave the sorting office, it hasn't been stolen; so if you ever wonder where that Christmas card went to, it's decorating a sorting office somewhere.

Once you're happy taking and opening mail, it's only a short step to removing it from the sorting office.
 
As we live in a society where the punishment doesn't seem to meet the crime, it's no wonder so many people are willing to risk their freedom to steal, knowing that if they did get caught, they'd be out within a short space of time.

To me, the ultimate was the Traveller that enslaved someone for almost fourteen years, who got a four year prison sentence, reduced to two years for good behaviour.

We need tougher sentences so that the temptation to break the law is reduced, otherwise these sorts of crime are just going to escalate.
 
There is a house about two miles from my house that bears the same name as our house, with the exception that our house is xxxxx Farm and they do not have the Farm bit on the end.

Following me so far?

A couple of years ago we started to notice that parcels from ebay were not being received by us. This coincided with a new postie being assigned to our rural round.

Things reached a head when ebay advised that they would consider barring me due to seller complaints about me "claiming not have received the goods".

Now. Between our house and the other house there is a single track road that is almost split in half at its mid point by a local Post Office.

On occasions when we would receive mail for the other house, I would leave it at the Post Office or, knock on their door. They were never once at home. So I left everything at the Post Office. Call me old fashioned here, but I started to suspect that this was two way traffic, and they must be receiving our missing parcels from ebay?

I asked at the Post Office to be told that "they are a very anti-social lot" and after several complaints about their anti-social behaviour they had gone, departed, quit, not paying their rent.

We never got our parcels back and the Post Office refuse to assist as did the the Police, who stated that they could not go around knocking on doors every time somebody said they didn't receive a parcel.

These parcels included a "high value" watch, several Pringle Jumpers and a load of car parts, all together totaling over £2000.

When the landlord took possession, of the now empty house he discovered a room full of discarded packaging from Pringle etc.

Rather sadly in the interim, the poor Postie was interrogated to the point that he didn't want the round anymore and asked to be moved, which he was.

In my court case yesterday that touched on "non-receipt" by me of letters from the courts, this was used in my defense.

There are rotten people around who think nothing of the chaos that they inflict on other for their own selfish ends.
 
I know someone who went to jail for postal theft He was a postman with a gambling addiction and one of the things he did was keep the envelope with the credit card in it and wait a day or so or the easily recognisable (in those days) machine printed envelope that had the pin number in and simply tie the two together.

Birthday card money was another easy target. Did the crime , did the time.

I doubt he would do time if caught doing the same in 2017....:dk:
 
The issue highlighted in the BBC programme goes well beyond the odd Royal Mail employee stealing postal items.

These are highly organised crime gangs, and the thieving Royal Mail employees are just footsoldiers.

In the cases we had in our neighbourhood, the fraud involved complete identity theft with the perpetrators walking into high street branches equipped with fake driver's licenses, bank cards and PINs, and requesting to make large transfers from various bank accounts they had full details of.

It also transpired that the fraudsters were able to request for the new driver's license, bank cards and PINs to be sent to the identity theft victims, and knew exactly which envelopes needed to be intercepted in the post. The victims had no idea that these requests were made on their behalf.

This would require the perpetrators to rely on their ability to fully intercept all these letters... one letter slipping through and their fraud would be discovered too early.

I think it is clear that this goes well beyond the odd rogue postman... there's something not quite right at the Royal Mail, and they are either burying their heads in the sand about it, or perhaps they are aware but unable to tackle it as it too well-rooted now.

Incidentally, in at least two cases I know off, the fraudsters had inside knowledge of internal bank procedures, and were able to circumnavigate security measures in ways that the banks themselves seem to have been unaware of based on their response when first approached by the victims.

As for the police.... when a person walks into a bank branch, there would be a considerable amount of CCTV footage, fingerprints, etc. They could follow the person's route when leaving the bank, they could look for mobile phone records, etc - but all these measures require resources which they do not have or do not allocate to solving fraud crime.

So the combined complacency of the Royal Mail, the banks, and the police are a heaven for organised crime gangs.
 
The issue highlighted in the BBC programme goes well beyond the odd Royal Mail employee stealing postal items.

These are highly organised crime gangs, and the thieving Royal Mail employees are just footsoldiers.

In the cases we had in our neighbourhood, the fraud involved complete identity theft with the perpetrators walking into high street branches equipped with fake driver's licenses, bank cards and PINs, and requesting to make large transfers from various bank accounts they had full details of.

It also transpired that the fraudsters were able to request for the new driver's license, bank cards and PINs to be sent to the identity theft victims, and knew exactly which envelopes needed to be intercepted in the post. The victims had no idea that these requests were made on their behalf.

This would require the perpetrators to rely on their ability to fully intercept all these letters... one letter slipping through and their fraud would be discovered too early.

I think it is clear that this goes well beyond the odd rogue postman... there's something not quite right at the Royal Mail, and they are either burying their heads in the sand about it, or perhaps they are aware but unable to tackle it as it too well-rooted now.

Incidentally, in at least two cases I know off, the fraudsters had inside knowledge of internal bank procedures, and were able to circumnavigate security measures in ways that the banks themselves seem to have been unaware of based on their response when first approached by the victims.

As for the police.... when a person walks into a bank branch, there would be a considerable amount of CCTV footage, fingerprints, etc. They could follow the person's route when leaving the bank, they could look for mobile phone records, etc - but all these measures require resources which they do not have or do not allocate to solving fraud crime.

So the combined complacency of the Royal Mail, the banks, and the police are a heaven for organised crime gangs.

It would be inappropriate to go into detail but I have confidence that the retail banking sector take such crimes very seriously and there are very many precautions/procedures/processes/info sharing in place to try and prevent fraud.
 
It would be inappropriate to go into detail but I have confidence that the retail banking sector take such crimes very seriously and there are very many precautions/procedures/processes/info sharing in place to try and prevent fraud.

Yes, in principle. But not always. I am not one to make wild allegations... I am in possession of a letter of apology from a high-street bank, where they apologise unreservedly for a serious security breach that could have and should have been avoided but was not followed-up correctly by their anti-fraud team in spite of several alarm bells. Like yourself, I don't want to go into too much detail on a public forum, and I do not want to provide the fraudsters' MO here because unfortunately banks are still vulnerable to it, but suffice to say that the letter also offers good-will financial compensation on top of the a full refund of the amounts taken from the affected bank accounts.
 

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