>>> the police won't take action on credit card fraud unless the bank asks them to do so.
I think youre right on that... earlier in the year when I had identity fraud type problems (someone did fraud on my address and several of my neighbours addresses all in a row to obtain a total of about £60k). We had dreadful problems trying to get Lloyds TSB to do something about it, but they were totally apathetic and didnt do stuff all. Even though the police were involved, they couldnt get much joy from Lloyds TSB in the way of being pro-active communication, and in the end the police couldnt do anything more without the Bank being prepared to press charges. Makes you think doesnt it when they are happy to just write off £60,000 rather than getting involved with the police and stopping the fraud.
Many of the banking frauds involve insiders.
When we lived in Liverpool, an insider in the Oxford Street branch of NatWest in the city centre was busy looting accounts, including my own. We suspect the bank insider worked with an accomplice who presented counter cheques to the the 'right' cashier, and pretended to be the account holder. It must have been a lucrative fraud.
The first I knew of it was from a series of phone calls from a vulgar and abrasive "fraud investigator" from NatWest. He basically accused me of being part of the scam and demanded to know my whereabouts on certain dates.
I started to wonder how someone could impersonate me. Why hadn't the cashier demanded to see identification before handing over my money to a complete stranger? Oxford Street is a very busy branch, far too busy for staff to recognise the customers personally. So why had a counter cheque been accepted without any corroborating identification, such as a driving licence, etc?
Eventually, I figured that the cashier knew the fraudster and must have been a willing accomplice in the fraud. I pressed the investigator on this and he started to clam up, which gave the game away! Busted! Inside Job!
Thieving in NatWest? Fancy that! And there was me thinking the dishonesty was confined to the NatWest boardroom.
Eventually, many months later, NatWest reluctantly agreed that they were responsible for the fraud and my stolen money was refunded in full, very belatedly.
The final nail in the coffin for this ghastly bank was when I demanded a simple (verbal) apology for the inconvenience and distress caused by the bank's disgraceful negligence.
But nope! I was told that it wasn't NatWest policy to apologise!
Is that so? Well I'll just keep telling this story, twenty times a year! Strike #1 and we are barely in to January!
