Perspective:

Beware international bank fraudsters

Geoff Wijesinghe

Many local businessmen and entrepreneurs have been victims of international cheque frauds by gangs of crooks.

These criminals, largely based in Africa, have employed ingenious methods, by which to dupe gullible businessmen, particularly in South Asian countries, which are searching for markets.

This has resulted in all local banks carrying notices warning their customers to be beware of international bank fraudsters. International cheque frauds have reached such proportions that Interpol has been inundated with complaints.

The modus operandi of these con men is to register bogus companies in their home countries such as Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya et al.

They are empty shells sans offices or staff. The fraudsters are equipped with computers and international and country business directories.

Their victims are medium and small-scale exporters who are in quest of expanding their services abroad.

They email their selected victims and call for quotations for the purchase of goods they have earmarked. Next, the businessmen at this end quite enthusiastically send the quotations.

In order to sound genuine, the fraudsters then start bargaining and finally agree to pay a certain price. The cost of goods running into thousands of dollars is paid for by fraudulent cheques, drawn in favour of the victims.

The cheques are so cleverly disguised that very often, the victims’ banks in Sri Lanka cashes the cheques, after clearing them with their principals, who in turn check with the clearing house in New York.

After detailed verification, it is often found that the cheques are duds. But, since the banks have cashed them and paid the monies to the victims, it not only recovers the monies paid out, but also levy fines on the duped businessmen, who on receiving the monies and the cheques being cleared by the local banks, have shipped the goods to the gangs of fraudsters who obviously have a hearty laugh at easy pickings, their only investments being a few email, and the posting of a dud cheque.

A red alert has also gone out from Interpol for banks and credit cardholders to beware of international rings, including terrorists, and individual operating large scale credit card scams.

The modus operandi here is for the fraudsters to obtain PIN numbers of credit cards and make fakes. And then, they run the victims’ accounts dry.

A number of LTTE cadres have been caught operating these scams, particularly from petrol stations in UK, Europe and the US, and they go to finance terrorism in Sri Lanka.

Banks are having a tough time in their credit card business as a result, and they are largely to blame for this. Due to heavy competition, they relax the rules in respect of the incomes to issue credit cards.

In fact, in countries such as South Korea, vendors canvassed customers and virtually forced people to take credit cards.

The result was massive credit and purchasing by individuals, who had no funds to support their credits, causing a crisis and sending the banks into a spin.