Graham Boynton paints a worrying picture of bank fraud in the Telegraph.
It was a moment I have always dreaded – indeed, have had nightmares about. In my nightmare, I put my debit card into the ATM and the card is returned: there is no money in my account. I am left in ruins, forced to take shelter under the arches at Charing Cross Station with the homeless.
Indeed. So easy is it to clone a card that there is always the underlying unease that someone has been playing fast and loose with my limited funds. I recall a few years back a colleague being telephoned about some rather large transactions in Australia. He had never been to Australia and the transactions were stopped – along with his card. He never did discover the where and when of the theft. Anyway, Graham finds out that his account has been raided:
I sprinted to the nearest Barclays to find out what was going on. Confronted by an ashen-faced man in a suit, my adviser was calmness personified: having your account ransacked was, she explained, not uncommon, and it was “quite likely that all my funds would be reimbursed”.
Apparently, just two days earlier, a similarly panicked customer had seen his mortgage payment bounce thanks to a fraud almost identical in method and scale to my own.
Replicate this around the world and this is multi billion business. How, though, did they get Graham’s card details?
My next Miss Marple moment was the realisation that the cards had only been in the same place at the same time in the safe of my hotel room. Obviously, one of the staff had the combination and had grabbed my cards and the details had been sent to Miami.
Well, that was a pretty stupid thing to do, wasn’t it? Never, never, leave bank cards, wallets, cheque boots et al in your hotel safe. It isn’t safe. This is a theft that could have so easily been avoided.
And if you can’t leave your valuables in a hotel safe, where can you leave them?
I always keep mine on my person when out and about. I certainly don’t leave them in a hotel safe.