And then there was Fraud...

Since arriving in London, I had heard countless stories of people being done by fraud, mainly involving their cash or credit cards. What the dirty little sods do is put a card-reader into an ATM, then disquise it in some way so that it can't be recognised. Each time a person puts their card into the machine, the reader gets the details and saves them for later. What is unclear to me is how they then get the PIN. Shaun suggested that they may have had a camera set up in a sneaky spot to steal the PINs. Either way, I knew something wasn't right, but still went ahead and used it.

Today, Renae gave me a call and told me that she had had £500 stolen from her account as soon as she'd used this particular ATM in Wimbledon. Sure enough, when I checked my transactions, there had been £260 worth taken out of various ATMs in places that I had never been to. Shafted!!!!

Called up the Fraud department at HSBC and registered my report. Going to take at least a week to get a new card, and they won't give me any money until the "investigation" is complete. Bastards! Apparently this happens so much over here that you can get special accounts that have "fraud insurance" on them. Might look into that option.

Spoke to a mate about why it's so common over here once. He suggested that the Pound is the most valuable currency in the World, so it's well-worth going through all the effort to steal it. Makes sense really. Why go through all that trouble back in Australia, to steal Australian Dollars? Maybe a Kiwi might think it was worth it... :-)

Ah well, just goes to show, follow your gut instinct. If your gut says, "This ATM looks dodgy", listen to it! Just another "experience" of living in London...

UPDATE: Thanks to Glen McGregor for this article on how the scam operates.