HBOS has frozen the accounts of Andy Hornby

HBOS has frozen the accounts of Andy Hornby, its chief executive, after a thief stole his identification details and withdrew thousands of pounds in cash.
Mr Hornby, who earned £1.7m last year, is said to have been told the news while on holiday.Fraud investigators are now poring over Mr Hornby's accounts to work out how much money has been stolen.The thief is believed to have obtained one of Mr Hornby's bank statements and used it to pose as the 41-year-old chief, stealing up to £7,000 in one day.The fraudster is said to have been filmed on CCTV withdrawing cash from bank branches and from an ATM machine.The embarrassing episode adds to a gruelling year for Mr Hornby, who has had to face shareholder unrest since HBOS launched a £4bn rights issue in April. It is not known for how long the fraudster had access to the accounts before staff became aware of the theft.The good news for Mr Hornby is that he will probably be eligible for a refund from HBOS. The bank said that, like all lenders, it will generally reimburse customers who are victims of fraud if they have taken sufficient care to safeguard their details. Banks advise their customers to shred financial documents and to keep those that are not shredded in a safe place.HBOS declined to discuss Mr Hornby's case, saying that the bank never commented on an individual customer's affairs.

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Posted in: HBOS

London Police’s the Dedicated Cheque and Plastic Crime Unit when they raided a factory that made counterfeit credit cards

Two people had been apprehended by London Police’s the Dedicated Cheque and Plastic Crime Unit when they raided a factory that made counterfeit credit cards. The people that were caught are involved in credit card fraud, were charged with conspiracy and defraud cases.The machines and gadgets that the criminals used were also taken into custody. Among those that were discovered included robbed chips, fake credit cards and account numbers, PIN terminals, fake magnetic strip cards, card reader and computer softwares.John Folan, Detective Chief Inspector of the DCPU, said that the positive turn out of the raid is one of the largest busts made and that it proved to be a welcome outcome for the Police’s efforts to quell crime, especially credit card and check fraud. He said that the bugged chips and PIN terminals have been spread in retailer’s outlets all over UK, which was believed to be more than twenty.
For people who are just thinking of applying for a credit card, go ahead and compare different credit card offers because the Association for Payment Clearing Services noted that card holders are protected by a banking code against such crimes.

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Posted in: London

Mortgage Asset Research Institute just released a report on mortgage fraud for the first three months of the year, and California ranked No. 2,

Mortgage Asset Research Institute just released a report on mortgage fraud for the first three months of the year, and California ranked No. 2, behind the No. 1 state of…..Florida!Coming in No. 3 was a three-way tie: Illinois, Maryland and Michigan.The MARI maintains a database of reported incidents of fraud and misrepresentations, and the ranking is based on total number of properties involved in fraud (the totals were not given). Nationwide such reports were up 42 percent in the first quarter vs. a year ago. And here I thought fraud would decrease after the credit crunch began last summer.
Although the report didn’t break out Orange County, it said in California 52 percent of properties with “misrepresentations” are in the Los Angeles.
“Income and employment misrepresentation on the mortgage application rank high in Florida, California, Illinois and Maryland. Florida and Maryland report higher income than employment misrepresentation, and California and Illinois report slightly higher employment than income misrepresentation.”“The first quarter data reveals that loan application misrepresentation continues to plague the industry. According to the FBI’s 2007 Mortgage Fraud Report, ‘the downward trend in the housing market provides an ideal climate for mortgage fraud perpetrators to employ a myriad of schemes suitable to a down market. Simply stated, mortgage fraud will not disappear

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Posted in: California

Increasing rates of global cyber fraud, it has been discovered that Nigerian banks have lost over N7.3 billion to cybercrime related activities.

Increasing rates of global cyber fraud, it has been discovered that Nigerian banks have lost over N7.3 billion to cybercrime related activities.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Global Network for Cyber Solution, Mr. Segun Olugbile, disclosed at a Press Conference in Abuja, yesterday.He said that banking industry, as one of the most strategic sectors of the economy needed protection from cyber-criminality considering the huge amount of funds lost in that sector annually.
He pointed out that some of the rampant cyber corrupt practices in the banking sector include online financial fraud inside-out, identity theft, system penetration by outsiders, data and network sabotage and denial of service attacks.Mr. Olugbile whose organisation recently convened a national stakeholders’ conference on Cybercrime and Cyber security to address the challenging issues and their impact on Nigeria, said global loses $200 billion dollars annually in direct and related damages to Cybercrime which also said was a threat to world peace and security.“The quantum effect of the emerging monstrous challenge of Cybercrime to developing economies translates into a colossal digital nightmare to the African Continent and indeed, particularly to Nigeria”, he said.The CEO added that there were reliable case studies to prove that an attack on a national infrastructure could, by virtue of its catastrophic consequences, completely paralyze the machinery of Government.
He therefore urged the federal government to declare Cybercrime and Cybersecurity as a National emergency, which deserved conscious political will and special budgetary resources to effectively engage the challenges presented by its impact.
Mr. Olugbile also called on Nigerian legislators to enact into law National Information Infrastructure (NIIA) Act, provide legislative framework for cyber crime and security and establish Cyber Crime Reporting and Response Centre, as well as, a Cybercrime and Cybersecurity Training Centre.

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Posted in: Nigeria

Donald H. Allen and his companies H&M Petroleum Corp. and American Energy Resources Corp. raised about $9.9 million from more than 350 investors

Colorado Springs man and his two oil and gas companies have agreed to pay $510,000 to settle civil fraud allegations, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday.The SEC alleged that between March 2002 and December 2006, Donald H. Allen and his companies H&M Petroleum Corp. and American Energy Resources Corp. raised about $9.9 million from more than 350 investors nationwide without disclosing that they had never generated profits for investors.Allen did not immediately respond to a telephone message.Allen was accused of spending $2.3 million of investor funds to pay for items including a custom speedboat, ski vacations, fitness equipment and jewelry.The SEC alleged Allen and his companies touted annual returns of up to 354 percent without disclosing the speculative nature of the projections; incorrectly told investors that AER and H&M invested in their own projects; that securities were improperly sold in unregistered transactions; and that Allen acted as an unregistered broker.Allen and his companies settled the case without admitting or denying the allegations

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Posted in: HM Petroleum Corp. and American Energy Resources Corp.

Charged with scheming and conspiring to defraud a bank are 31-year-old Michael Vorce of Grand Rapids and 29-year-old James Jett of Byron Center.

Two Michigan men face federal charges in an alleged fraud scheme using stolen personal information to obtain bank loans for purported purchases of yachts. Court documents filed Thursday say the two tried to steal financial information of a Milwaukee lawyer in the attempt to buy a yacht worth about $550,000. Charged with scheming and conspiring to defraud a bank are 31-year-old Michael Vorce of Grand Rapids and 29-year-old James Jett of Byron Center. Authorities say the alleged scheme involved use of the personal information to get expensive loans for the purchases, even though in some cases the yachts were fictitious. The FBI issued a news release saying the investigation is continuing into the multistate scheme said to involve at least $2.6 million and at least four financial institutions.

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Posted in: Michigan

Avusa Media Ltd payroll administrator Laurence van Tonder, who allegedly defrauded the company out of more than R5-million in three years,

Avusa Media Ltd payroll administrator Laurence van Tonder, who allegedly defrauded the company out of more than R5-million in three years, has appeared in the Port Elizabeth commercial crimes court.Van Tonder, 38, of Hampshire Road, Sherwood, Port Elizabeth, reportedly pocketed R1653254 of the money himself, but the state has charged him with taking the entire amount of R5075552.He is accused of 94 counts of fraud, committed between November 2005 and December last year.He was not asked to plead and no evidence was led. The case was postponed to September 15, possibly to plead to the charges. Van Tonder is out on warning.His duties at Newspaper House included capturing the monthly payroll on the electronic payroll package system and reconciling monthly payments to Discovery Health.Van Tonder allegedly opened four FNB accounts in his name. A fifth one was opened at Nedbank for his life partner.
He then allegedly entered inflated payments on the transfer request forms for payment to Discovery Health, and altered the banking details to reflect these amounts, misrepresenting to Avusa Media Ltd that the bank accounts belonged to Discovery Health.

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Posted in: Avusa Media Ltd

Bradford & Bingley, admitted yesterday that it had been forced to take an £18 million impairment charge in the half year to June 30 to cover borrowing

Bradford & Bingley, admitted yesterday that it had been forced to take an £18 million impairment charge in the half year to June 30 to cover borrowing by criminal gangs and other fraudsters. The sum represents an increase on a £15 million charge taken in June. B&B’s losses may be only the tip of the iceberg. The Association of Chief Police Officers has estimated the scale of mortgage fraud in the UK at £700 million a year, but many believe this to be conservative. Navigant, a consultancy that conducts forensic investigations, has estimated that British mortgage lenders could be sitting on at least £7 billion of fraudulent loans. B&B, which has 3 per cent of the mortgage market, is the first high street bank to disclose the size of its losses due to fraud. Rod Kent, its chairman, said that the bank had not been singled out and was no more vulnerable than other lenders. “We don’t think we are being selected, we are just being more transparent,” he said.

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Posted in: Bradford and Bingley

damage from the global mortgage meltdown has more than matched that of the savings-and-loan bailouts of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Long before the mortgage crisis began rocking Main Street and Wall Street, a top FBI official made a chilling, if little-noticed, prediction: The booming mortgage business, fueled by low interest rates and soaring home values, was starting to attract shady operators and billions in losses were possible. "It has the potential to be an epidemic," Chris Swecker, the FBI official in charge of criminal investigations, told reporters in September 2004. But, he added reassuringly, the FBI was on the case. "We think we can prevent a problem that could have as much impact as the S&L crisis," he said.Today, the damage from the global mortgage meltdown has more than matched that of the savings-and-loan bailouts of the 1980s and early 1990s. By some estimates, it has made that costly debacle look like chump change. But it's also clear that the FBI failed to avert a problem it had accurately forecast.Banks and brokerages have written down more than $300 billion of mortgage-backed securities and other risky investments in the last year or so as homeowner defaults leaped and weakness in the real estate market spread. . .Most observers have declared the mess a gross failure of regulation. To be sure, in the run-up to the crisis, market-oriented federal regulators bragged about their hands-off treatment of banks and other savings institutions and their executives. But it wasn't just regulators who were looking the other way. The FBI and its parent agency, the Justice Department, are supposed to act as the cops on the beat for potentially illegal activities by bankers and others. But they were focused on national security and other priorities, and paid scant attention to white-collar crimes that may have contributed to the lending and securities debacle. . .
Sources familiar with the FBI budget process, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the growing fraud problem, say that he and other FBI criminal investigators sought additional assistance to take on the mortgage scoundrels. They ended up with fewer resources, rather than more.In 2007, the number of agents pursuing mortgage fraud shrank to around 100. By comparison, the FBI had about 1,000 agents deployed on banking fraud during the S&L bust of the 1980s and '90s, said Anthony Adamski, who oversaw financial crime investigations for the FBI at the time.
The FBI says it now has about 200 agents working on mortgage fraud, but critics say the agency might have averted much of the problem had it heeded its own warning.

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Posted in: FBI

Widespread fraud. Hundreds of billions of dollars in losses. Thousands of displaced homeowners.

Widespread fraud. Hundreds of billions of dollars in losses. Thousands of displaced homeowners. You'd think somebody would have seen it coming… The Los Angeles Times reports that as early as 2004, the FBI accurately forecast the consequences of unscrupulous lending practices left unchecked. Unfortunately, despite the agency's assurances that it was combating the problem, its focus on "national security and other priorities" left white collar crimes a secondary priority. How secondary? During the S&L bust of the '80s and '90s, the agency had 1,000 agents devoted to banking fraud. In 2007, the number of agents pursuing mortgage fraud totaled 100. To critics, that's a sign that the FBI dropped the ball. The agency, meanwhile, says it did the best it could—mortgage companies simply didn't want to hear its warnings about the growing fraud problem. And your home—oh yeah, that's the bank's now.
Let's hope the next time around, somebody is paying a little more attention.

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Posted in: Los Angeles Times

Dubai property crash

Soaring housing prices in Dubai are likely to peak in 2009 before falling at least 15 percent as the Gulf emirate takes measures to weed out short-term speculators, a Reuters poll showed on Tuesday.Residential property prices in the desert city, home to palm tree-shaped islands and an indoor ski slope, are likely to jump 35 percent this year, according to the median of forecasts from 10 analysts at banks, investment firms and research institutions.Price growth will probably slow to 8.5 percent next year, when five of nine analysts expect prices to hit a peak after double-digit increases in each year since Dubai opened its property market to foreign investment in 2002.

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Posted in: Dubai

Emirati businessman Abid Al-Boom has heard evidence that he owes depositors 847 million dirhams ($231 million)

trial of Emirati businessman Abid Al-Boom has heard evidence that he owes depositors 847 million dirhams ($231 million) while assets seized covered only 15 percent of the amount, the UAE daily The National reported on Wednesday.Thousands of investors, including many on fixed low incomes, say they have lost their life savings in a bogus multi-million dirham investment portfolio run by the Al-Boom, prosecutors said.After receiving numerous complaints from depositors, Dubai Attorney General, Essam Eisa Humaidan, in July ordered al Boom’s arrest along with eight others, including an African business partner, an Emirati business partner and Al-Boom’s brother Khalid, the paper added. “We have registered to date complaints from 3,458 depositors and counting. My office has been busy answering calls from depositors and we have referred the case to the Dubai Rulers Court where auditors will examine al Boom’s accounts to determine where the money has gone,” the paper quoted Yousef Foulaz, the chief prosecutor for Deira First District as saying. "The final amount is likely to go up as we continue to receive and register more complaints."Mr Humaidan had earlier ordered the closure of the offices of Al Boom Holding LLC, and Abid Al Boom Management and Development Properties, the suspension of trading in shares owned by the accused and the freezing of all assets belonging to them, including any real estate and bank accounts held by the accused, in order to secure investors’ rights, the paper said.

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Posted in: Al Boom Holding LLC Dubai