News
Channel warned about rising ID theft
Ben Furfie February 8, 11:40am
Comments (1)
Resellers and distributors should cross reference previous orders to root out suspicious purchases
Identity theft is on the rise within the UK IT channel, KPMG's latest figures on fraud have warned, with it highlighting that it reached £1 billion last year, the highest since 1995.
The figures, revealed today by the analyst's Forensic Fraud Barometer, show that although the total number of fraud cases that reached court fell to 197, down from the high of 277 in 2006, the value per case was increasing.
It also highlighted that identity scams were on the up with channel insiders warning resellers and distributors to maintain a close view on what is being ordered by who.
"In the channel there is not really a problem with credit or debit card fraud, it’s more the identity theft that is the problem," commented Eddie Pacey, director of credit at distributor Bell Micro.
"People are setting up customer accounts with resellers, ordering goods, receiving them and then disappearing without paying," he added.
Pacey suggested that they look with suspicion an order of laptops and hard drives when all previous orders have only been for security software as an example.
"Resellers need to become more wary and organised in their processes," warned Pacey. "Most orders are placed electronically or over the phone and are not checked twice."
Source: CRN
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Comments
“First Hand Experience of Identity Theft”
Posted by: Nic - February 8, 5:19pm
Our company recently became the vicitims of identity theft. The fraudster set up 0800 phone lines and would answer calls in the name of our financial director. He then set up trading accounts with online store and business suppliers. He was successfull in creating an account with Dabs4Work and purchased over £10'000 of product on 2 purchase orders. When DABS tried to chase us for non payment they discovered that they had been had over by a crook. Interestingly DABS were so keen to ship £10'000 of laptops that on the first order they shipped straight to an alternative address (not the address we have as registered or trading), on credit without even speaking to anyone at our company to authenticate the order. In my eyes thats the result of greed or targets and certainly shows poor due diligence proceedures. Fortunately PC World business refused the account due to address being wrong and the phone number being wrong. We reported it to the police, and were aware that some 3 weeks later the fraudster would still answer the phone in the name of our FD. Truly Shocking, and unfortunately we can rely on the police to do absolutely JACK to crack down on this sort of crime.
My advice would be if you are about to offer credit, be 100% sure you know who you are offering it to, and go for cleared funds payment first time round.
If you are a victim of corporate identity theft, get on to the credit reference agencies, since while you are not liable for the frauds against suppliers, your credit rating can get effected.
These fraudsters usually target companies with good rating since companies offer them credit in the blink of an eye.
Coporate fraudsters also know all the Companies House tricks, CHECK who is appointed as a director at your company, since if the fraudster has appointed himself you mgiht find you are liable for the £10'000 bill when it comes through the door.
Don't get me started on B2C credit card fraud, or B2B bad debtors.
Good Luck
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