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Aussie Man Hunted after 20 years

Chetan — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 14:39:25 -08:00

Australian serial conman Peter Foster has been arrested, six months after he failed to appear in a Sydney court over an alleged Bitcoin fraud. Mr Foster, 59, is accused of defrauding a Hong Kong man of A$1.7m (£900,000; $1,2m) in cryptocurrency. Last year he was arrested in Queensland and extradited to New South Wales, where he allegedly went on the run after being given bail. He was arrested in the state of Victoria on Tuesday. Mr Foster is accused of posing as a man called William "Bill" Dawson as part of an online scam. Police have alleged he received money from the Hong Kong man in several tranches between April 2019 and January 2020, in amounts ranging from about A$125,000 to $890,000. He faces multiple charges of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception, and publishing false or misleading material to obtain an advantage. At the time he went missing, he was on strict bail conditions that required him to surrender his passport, wear an electronic ankle bracelet, and not use the internet or a mobile phone. He was also barred from leaving his Sydney home unless it was a medical emergency or he was seeing police or his lawyers. Mr Foster was declared a fugitive after failing to appear in court on 20 May. The Australian Federal Police arrested him on Tuesday near the town of Gisborne, about an hour north-west of Melbourne.
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Real Story of Avion and his articles got caught

Chetan — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 14:43:55 -08:00

A man from London has been sentenced for fraudulently obtaining more than 40 car insurance policies while posing as a broker and pocketing nearly £18,000 over a five-week period. Gurwinder Virdee, 30, of Gregory Road, Southall, London, acted as an illegal intermediary – also known as a ‘ghost broker’ - for esure, offering his victims cheap insurance deals. In reality, Virdee was not a broker with the insurance company and used false details and forged documentation to reduce the cost of the premium. After identifying a pattern of suspicious policies, esure ran further enquiries which led them to believe that a single person was setting up these policies and that they were possibly fraudulent. The insurer then referred the case to the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED). The Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) supported the investigation by collecting evidence of fraudulent activity from insurers. Virdee was sentenced to 23 months and two weeks imprisonment, suspended for two years, 30 days Rehabilitation Activity Requirement (RAR), 140 hours of unpaid work to be completed within 12 months and an electronically-tagged curfew for three months on Wednesday July 21 at Inner London Crown Court. He was also ordered to repay £1,000 in costs plus surcharges and to forfeit his mobile phone, laptop and documents used to commit the fraud. Virdee previously pleaded guilty in June this year to fraud by false representation, money laundering, forgery and to the offence of being an unauthorised broker under the Financial Services and Markets Act (FSMA). IFED had already seized assets totalling £60,000 from Virdee in 2019 using civil powers of an Account Seizure Order under the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA). This income is believed to have been generated from criminality undertaken outside of the date range for this case. Detective Sergeant Matthew Hussey, from the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department, said: “Whilst his immorality was clear from the start of this investigation, we unearthed the corrupt lengths Virdee went to in order to aid his crime as we dug deeper into this case. “Virdee targeted innocent members of the public who did not have an understanding of insurance in the UK, taking advantage of this vulnerability for his own financial gain. These victims had trusted him as a legitimate broker after being referred by friends, genuinely believing that he would help them to insure their first vehicle in this country. “As well as exploiting members of the public, Virdee also used the home address of a childhood friend to conduct some of his business, showing that he had no qualms in potentially incriminating those close to him. “Thankfully, the eagle-eyed team at esure spotted this pattern of fraudulence and referred the case over to IFED. This collaborative approach between insurance companies and law enforcement means that together we can protect honest policyholders and bring ‘ghost brokers’ to justice.” Initial enquiries made by esure found that 42 policies had been taken out between May and June 2017 from either the same location or a particular device. A significant number of the policies were also accompanied by electronic copies of no claims discount documents from the same insurance company. This insurer later confirmed that they had not provided these documents and that they were fake. esure contacted all of the known policyholders to inform them that their policies were fraudulent and then referred the case to IFED for further investigation. A number of the victims who were contacted provided the same three names for the broker they had dealt with: Gurwinder, Gurwinder Singh or Mr Virdee. They also provided the same contact number and bank account details, both of which were associated with Virdee. The accounts provided by these victims also revealed that Virdee had sought certain vulnerabilities. The policyholder was usually referred to Virdee by a friend or colleague, and tended to be a newly-qualified driver or inexperienced in taking out insurance in the UK.
Learn more: Real Story of Avion and his articles got caught

Real Story of Avion and his articles got caught

Chetan — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 14:49:41 -08:00

past four months, readers of the Guardian and Observer have reported losing more than £1m to frauds as an epidemic of scams sweeps the country. Since the start of June, we have heard from more than 30 readers who have been tricked into handing money over to criminals and have written to ask for our help. Individual losses have ranged from a few hundred pounds to £245,000, and in total come to £1.05m. Some of the frauds date back many months, and readers are still trying to get their money back, but many have happened since the Covid pandemic started and reflect rising levels of fraud across the country. According to the banking trade body, UK Finance, more than £750m was stolen from consumers in only the first six months of this year, with fraudsters using increasingly sophisticated means to part people from their cash. Each of these crimes leaves a victim. They are devastated at having been duped and, in some cases, are left struggling to get by, having seen their life savings disappear. Banks, building societies and other financial organisations are adding automated warnings and interventions to try to get customers to think twice about payments and to report suspicious calls and emails before they act on them. But our readers’ stories show that more needs to be done. Transfers appear to be too easy, fraudsters too plausible and refunds are hit and miss. Here are some of the stories we heard during the summer. Lloyds Bank Online cyber security page on laptop Victims of fraud: how to get your money back from your bank Read more Groomed for eight months and persuaded to hand over £160,000 Retired nurse Mabel Jennings* had spent most of the year shielding from Covid when her phone rang. An articulate stranger claimed he was calling from a financial firm, Harrell Securities LLC, about her BP shares. Jennings owned 300, worth about £1,000, and she was told that clients of Harrell may be interested in buying them for more than their market value. High angle view of a red phone receiver Mabel Jennings was persuaded to sign up with a company to sell her shares and then over eight months was groomed with weekly calls and emails. Photograph: the_burtons/Getty Images The 82-year-old, who had been recently widowed, was persuaded to sign up with the company to sell her shares. Then, over the next eight months, she was groomed with weekly calls and emails, and bombarded with official-looking letters and contracts requesting payments for associated costs. Jennings made 13 payments totalling £159,918 to an account in Indonesia. Her bank, HSBC, questioned the first £5,292 transfer and a later sum but accepted that she was paying a company to sell her shares and allowed the remaining payments of up to £31,000 a time to go through uncontested – even though she had previously fallen victim to a different scam. Jennings only realised there was a problem when she was unable to contact Harrell after she had emptied her savings accounts and borrowed £2,800 from her nephew for what she hoped was the final payment. “She was too ashamed to tell me what happened – she had to write me a letter,” her stepson says. “I think lockdown made her even lonelier and more trusting than usual. Now she has to survive solely on her monthly pension with no savings left for a holiday or car repair.” HSBC managed to recover the final payment of £2,676 and returned it to Jennings but it but refused to reimburse the rest. It says that the contingent reimbursement model (CRM) – a voluntary code outlining when defrauded customers should get back their cash – does not cover payments overseas. However, banks can still be held liable for overseas transfers if they are deemed to have failed in their duty of care, according to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). The CRM requires signatory banks to refund all customers categorised as vulnerable, and it was for this reason that HSBC reimbursed Jennings after she lost money to a courier fraud six years earlier. After we questioned HSBC’s level of protection for vulnerable customers, it repaid the £159,918. Tricked into giving criminals access to his bank account Gareth Wilcox*, 86, was called by a man purporting to be a BT security engineer and persuaded that his internet connection had been compromised. During a two-hour call, the scammer tricked him into allowing remote access to his computer and asked him to open his online NatWest account to check the security settings. Immediately, £5,000 was stolen from his account. Wilcox spent £56 trying to get through to NatWest’s fraud department but the bank refused to refund the stolen money despite having cancelled his debit card two weeks earlier when Wilcox was tricked into authorising payment to a fraudster impersonating HMRC.
Learn more: Real Story of Avion and his articles got caught