We think DH's debit card has been cloned.. anyone got any experience of this?

[ShinyHappyPeopleHoldingHands]

Today's been pants.. I've got some kind of lurgy (some viral thing the kids have had) and spent most of the day in bed so didn't get online to do my online banking until late this afternoon. To my shock we were over £300 over our overdraft limit!

Rang bank and they told me all the transactions that have gone through in the last two days.. and they are all on DH's card.. amounts like £80 here.. £70 there.. amounting to over £300 in 2-3 days. We knew were close to our o/d limit and there is no way I or DH would have had a spending spree like that.. so intitially I thought maybe he card was missing/stolen..

I tried to phone him (he was picking DS1 up from an after school club) and I couldn't get thro for ages. Turns our he had gone to garage to fill car up, card was declined (so obviously not missing!) and he was going through ordeal of getting the payment authorised on the phone. . He was thinking "Why? I wonder what's come out..?" but going thro the process so he could leave the garage and dash off to get DS...!

Bank had asked me to get him to ring when he got back (as it is his card) and they have given all the times of the recent transactions. DH has been able to idenitfy those that he DID make (a couple of small Tesco payments). The rest he has no idea about..

He has to phone back in the morning when hopefully we will be able to see what the payment were for and I am hoping to God that they are for things and places we don't normally buy/spend money at so that we have a better chance of proving it wasn't DH. Am also assuming they must of been over the phone or online or else they would need a PIN as well, right?

We have put a stop on card but this is very scary. What is they don't believe it wasn't DH.. what if the money has been spent locally.. or it for goods not services so no delivery address needed giving?

Has anyone been through this??

I DID intitially scream at DH and say "Have you had a spending spree or what?" but he would have to be mad to have done that.. he knew we had no money and that it wouldn't go unnoticed!

We watched those scam programmes last year showing how cards gets scanned for cloning (either when taken away to process payment or restaurant for example) or sometimes right in front of customers when the card can be swipped discreetly on a piece of equipment about the scammer's person, and the details copied... but when you see it on the TV like that you sort of imagine this doesn't happen often. My mum reminded me that her Sainsburies credit card was used in this way a few years ago (she got the money back) even though she was still in possession of it.. so it is more common than I thought?

I feel sick.. we are so broke.. and when we get paid on Saturday we will STILL be broke because of the "missing £300" that we didn't even have in the first place!!!

SJ, sorry you are feeling so ill on top of all this, I hope you will be able to find out the details before the weekend and get things moving!

We had a card cloned once too. It was a couple of weeks before we got married and luckily was before we had a joint bank account so at least one of us still had access to money. DHs card was cloned from a cash machine (we think) and over £1500 was taken (put him into overdraft). He had a few forms to fill in and it took a few weeks to get sorted but that was mainly because the bank account was with a Scottish bank, we live in England and there are no branches in England. If we could have got into a bank most of the forms could have been filled out there and then but they all had to be posted back and forward between us, the branch and head office. The bank just sent dh a list of all the transactions and trusted him to be honest about which were his and which weren't. Then the money was put back in the account pretty quickly.

Hmm I am pretty sure that ours was pc related but can't remember if they had the https and padlock. They had set up a paypal a/c in my name with my credit card - I don't have a paypal a/c, just use DH's. The e-mail address was to a mac account to someone with DH's first name but a different surname. Thought it was odd to use an actual name in the e-mail if you are defrauding and I did try and google the name but didn't get anywhere. Also strange to have refunds on transactions. Maybe he was an amateur fraudster.

ShinyHappy, just found out we are in the same boat as you today. And this is after dh asked for the cc to be stopped several months ago! Luckily (?) the transactions are miles away from us so we should be able to prove not us. I don't know how much for yet but includes a council tax bill - now isn't that a bit silly as that would be a bit traceable!! I have my fingers crossed for you and for me...

A Council Tax Bill . Is there anything more traceable?

Mind you - one of the transactions on my mums card was for electronics stuff from currys and they were to be delivered. Neither Egg, nor the Police, nor even currys seemed in the slightest bit interested.

I suppose some people are so desperate (and perhaps not awfully bright) that they would pay an overdue bill by whatever means presented itself! But all the same..

You should get your money back.

We had our card cloned - they took £3k out of our account (our overdraft) and paid for goods in France. I was informed that these txns were going to come out but it would be cleared up asap. Which it was.

Although, this type of crime is happening so often, it is taking the financial institutions longer to sort out (approx 3-4 weeks).

Btw, mine was cloned in a petrol station as well.

Do you all now use cash at petrol stations then? I'm worried as I always use my debit card.

Hi,this happened to dp just before Christmas-card cloned and £500 taken out in Malaysia.Report it to the police and your bank immediately.dp got his money back from HSBC in about 6 weeks.Its very annoying though!!HTH.

I know one credit specialsits (can't remember who it was) who says never to use debit cards, becaseu you have no protection, and always to sue credit cards - but only if you can be confidetn of paying them off in full every month. That way you get the interest free credit period and the chance to see all the trnasactions and query them, plus it is the credit cards company's liability - all without it affecting your daily cash flow.

my Mum & Dad hasd sme bogus transactions on them, to buy flights to places they had no intention of going. The bummer was it was just before they went off on holiday, so they had to get those cards stopped, without time to get new ones sent out and then rely on another set of cards that fortunately they had, for thier holiday. Plus the police/credit card company didn't seem that interested in picking up whoever it was who was going to be taking those flights!

I have stopped using paypal because I'd reached the £500 limit they allow you on a credit card (I didn't know there was a limit) and I'm absolutely not going to give them my debit card/current account details (have had paypal hacked into before).

I will report it to the police as soon as we know what the transactions are and the banks are going ahead and treating it as fraud. Which I HOPE will be tomorrow...

Don't have time to read the whole thread but DH has had his card nicked once. Bank (Lloyds) immediately refunded the money from the disputed transactions and sent him the paperwork.

Another time he lost his card and someone managed to call the bank, up his overdraft and arrange a transfer. By chance he logged on and noticed the o/d limit increase and alerted them.

THEN recently, his card was cloned and used in AUSTRALIA of all bloody places a whole load of foreign exchange places to the tune of £2000.

Again, bank refunded and sent the paperwork to be completed retrospecively.

The bank should look after the fraud/ legal end for you. You shouldn't have to deal with the police unless you want to. It's more or less "their fault" that their systems don't catch this stuff, not your fault for being targeted.

Insist the bank refund the money asap so you're not out of pocket. Check their website to see if they have any info.

Well, today's update is that I went on our online banking page and disovering that we were a couple of hundred pounds less overdrawn than yesterday... still no dodgey transactions showing on the actual statement.. phoned bank and they explained that what has happened is that obviously one of more of the merchants (shps or wherever) where the fraudulant transactions have taken place have become suspicious that there was nothing not legit.. and the money will not leave our account after all.

There are still two outstanding transactions that we will now have to wait until next week to see if they leave the account or not. The bank could also see that most of them were made via someone buying something for between a few to twenty pounds and then getting £50 cashback . (I assume they have still got away with this money if the merchant smelt a rat about the transaction?)

So looks like not internet or phone sales after all.. but a shop.. which means there is an actual clone of DH's debit card! (Obviously won't work now; card is cancelled.) She said they may not have needed the PIN as sometime fraudsters are very clever about using systems where there is still a swipe machine instead of Chip & Pin.

Of course I suppose if a card is cloned during the course of a normal transaction, then they've got access to your PIN as well haven't they!

Make me so to think of them signing themselves as DH.. altho they'd have been seriously better off scamming someone else then people who are as broke as we are!

If our Sainsburys is anything to go by, sometimes the PIN machine doesn't work and you have to sign and I think they have got out of the habit of checking the sig.

Glad it's not quite as bad as first feared SJ. Hope it's soon sorted

(So, I meant to say, beause they are still taking sigs, if you say you can't remember your PIN they'll let you sign. So much for security!)

You're right about them still taking signatures - but the differecne since CHIP & PIN was introduced is that the reailarers then are liable if there is fraud, ie the banks/credit card companies can then claim off them if something was signed for rather than the PIN used.

Doesn't change the situtation for you ate the receving end though!

I expect it's possible to clone a card and leave out the chip. Amex's for example do not have chips so shops might not assume that a card will have a chip - or even care!

Good God I typed a lot of sh*t this morning didn't I! You could be forgiven for thinking that English was definitely not my first language!! And most bilingual people would have done better than that..

(I am still ill.. can't shake this viral thing off, it's very inconvenient to say the least, I go from the sofa to the kitchen, getting pain and fever medications for myself and DS who has the same and occasionally to the washing machine or tumbler trying not to think about how the environment is suffering because I feel too ill to venture into the sunshine in the garden and put a load on the line! DD is now COVERED in chicken pox.. we stops counting at 104 spots.. but bless her she is fetching and carrying for us because she feels fine. DH has just gone to the school to get some work for her.. oh and obviously I occasionally make it onto Mumsnet.. but it does my eyes in so then I have to lay down.. I am such a wuss and I really need to go to uni tomorrow..!!)

I am reading all of your comments with interest btw.. sorry not have commented on them all, bit out of it.. temperature, 38.6..

DH had his debit card refused at Tesco for an amount under £10 just days after having a £3k loan paid into the account. When I checked, there was a difference of just over £600 between the available balance and what there should have been. All the bank could tell me was there were unprocessed transactions- didn't know how many or what for.

When they came through they were to a holiday company based in Manchester. Once it was all sorted we were told "they thought someone had bought them a holiday" (WTF- we live in Kent) and the bank treated it like no big deal and refused to tell us the name of these people we'd bought a holiday for.

Had we not had the loan paid in there would have been no funds available because at the time we were permanently to the max of our OD, so we think it was someone in the bank (Abbey)

That's dreadful Tallulah Did you manage to stop the transactions?

One bank-related point I am not happy about is that if the last two unprocessed transactions don't get processed either (which would be good obviously) the downside is that the bank will not look to take it any further because although someone has clearly tried to defraud/steal from us, and put us through loads of stress in the process, there still won't have been any actual theft. So they'll leave it!

Today we can see where the transactions are. And those that appeared, yesterday, to not be going to leave our account after all, have in fact left. We have had a total of £479 stolen. Today was pay day and because of the thefts we are still over £200 overdrawn. And there are bills waiting to be paid. On Monday I am going to have to pay some of them.

The transactions are all in either Sainsburies or Tescos in various stores in and around London. I was a bit worried this morning when I went online and saw it just said Tesco and Sainsburies as we shop in both of those (esp. Tesco) but when DH phoned the card line, and we were told the places, we felt relieved that they are nowhere close to home. I don't think we should have any problems claiming these amounts back; I just hopes it's soon. We have to print out a statement and highlight all the fraudulant transactions and send it back to them with the fraud forms (once they arrive.)

I keep wondering what kind of person goes on a spending spree, from store to store, for two days, with a fake debit card, getting max. cashback at each and spending their ill gotten money. We are really suffering because of this; we were broke before, now much more so and we are afraid to spend anything (from the overdraft we have had to extend and which is way to big for us) because we don't know how long it will be before the money is replaced.

The transactions actually all appeared on our statements. The bank refunded them but I didn't like their attitude. Had it been my debit card used it would have made more sense because I do most of the shopping but it was DH's card and he only ever uses it at Tesco. I mentioned this to the bank but they weren't interested. As far as they were concerned we had the money back so it was no big deal.

Not quite the same thing but my mum had her bag stolen at a restaurant just before chip and pin was compulsory and within 20 minutes the person had done 2 lots of shopping at Sainsburys which is a 10 minute drive from the restaurant. They obviously didn't check the signature because there wouldn't have been time for the thief to get it right. As you say, what sort of scum bag does that?