UK Fraud Likely Could Have Been Prevented

The story keeps getting louder. Last week the chairman of England’s Barclays Bank, Marcus Agius, became the latest victim of identity theft. A thief posing as Mr. Agius called the bank and requested that a new card be sent out. As in most account takeover cases, the fraudster no doubt requested that the card be sent to an alternate address that was easily accessible. From there, he racked up almost $20,000 in fraudulent charges, with little chance of getting caught.

Unfortunately, this story is not a surprise to us at ID Insight, as most banks still do not protect against fraudulent changes in address. This crime would most likely have been prevented had Barclays taken action when the caller asked that the card be delivered to that alternate address. My guess is that if we would have analyzed Mr. Agius’s real address versus the one the thief “moved Mr. Agius to” using our Safe2Change process, we would have seen some major red flags.