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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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 institutio...

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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...

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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,...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Posted in: Al Boom Holding LLC Dubai