What's in their (digital) wallet? The scammers loading phones with stolen cards

Criminals are pouring time and resources into a new way of exploiting hacked bank accounts, writes Shane Hickey

- Shane Hickey

A new and sophisticated fraud has emerged in which criminals transfer the bank cards of victims on to the digital wallets of their own phones and then buy goods online and in high street shops.

A group of anti-fraud bodies have come together to warn of the dangers of the scam, which international criminal gangs have been using in the UK as well as North America and other countries.

The scale and speed at which the fraud has taken off has alarmed experts, who say they are seeing a new level of sophistication, with criminals committing a lot of resources and effort into scamming people and avoiding detection.

The fraud involves convincing victims they are getting a bargain online, are eligible for help with their energy bill, or some similar ruse, and need to provide their bank details. Then the fraudster uses a temporary password supplied by the bank to the victim to transfer their payment card on to the criminal's own phone using the digital wallet: the app that stores payment details on people's phones.

Garry Lilburn, the operations director at the Cyber Defence Alliance, a non-profit intelligence organisation, says the sophistication of this scam and its widespread use is prompting growing concern. "It is the sheer scale and effort that these people are going into," he says.

How the scam works

The fraud makes use of familiar methods that criminals have developed to entice people to part with their bank details - perhaps a text message promising a payment, with a link to a fake website, or an offer on social media for cheap products, usually involving claims that are too good to be true.