MNHQ - please can you clarify your policy on fraud?

[justanothernameagain]

THREAD ON GENERAL FRAUD - please do not delete.

If someone is accused of committing fraud via MN, by several MNers.
If said MNers have a load of evidence they would like to share with you.

Do you see it as your role to investigate and forward to the police?

Or do you just want to get the site "back to normal" and take a hands off approach?

@katemumsnet please can you clarify?

@Mychildcouldnotbreaatfeed

Kate. What about Katherine's reply to me telling me to take it to the thread?

How does that sit with report report report?

Hi there - I've had a look at this now and in fact when you place it in context, it reads a bit differently. We were responding to a general statement you made about the threads - that they were 'evil and horrible' - rather than doubts about their veracity. Sorry for the confusion though.

Speaking generally, rather than specifically... I don't think MNHQ need to wait until they have definite evidence of an actual fraud before reporting to the police. Just a reasonable suspicion of a potential fraud...
I do think posters need to take responsibility for themselves; but think once there are sufficient pointers then MNHQ need to stop having friendly telephone chats and instead hand this over to the professionals.

Speaking generally, rather than specifically, a fraud perpetrated on the Internet is just as much a fraud as one by any other means

As a separate question to MNHQ- someone on another thread suggested more efforts to educate people how to spot fraud/ trolls/internet scams more generally. Clearly there are still plenty of people willing to handover personal info/contact details quite freely, which is hugely concerning.

The thing that has annoyed me the most is that hq did say he checked out. Above and beyond sticks in my head.

That's ok that you did that and said that but ffs don't pretend you didn't. which has been the line for days now.

It took all this to get an admittance that moving from thread was a bad idea and that won't happen again. Yes it's a shame. But times change. Sites change. This isn't the wee cosy place it was all those years ago.

Well thank you MNHQ for actually talking to us about this awful mess.
Appreciated.

Hang on. I had reported and reported the threads

You seriously expected me to go on to the threads and tell the army they were ballixed and to stop calling people evil and horrible and t was all not quite as it seemed?

And that wouldn't have got me deleted for troll hunting and flayed alive on the threads?

You wanted me to throw myself to the lions.

The thing to remember; without implying anything about the poster that is being discussed here; is that people who are abusive, manipulative and deceptive are often married. They are often a genuine spouse of someone who is terminally ill. They are often parents. They often have genuine sickness in the family.
Being married to someone who is terminally ill or being the parent of a very sick child, or being sick oneself does not mean that they become an honest, genuine, compassionate person overnight.
Its a bit like the saying 'Never speak ill of the dead.' Why on earth not? If they behaved badly in life are we supposed to ignore it?

I'm sorry Mychild - are you saying that someone has reported this and we've ignored it? I'm very concerned if this is the case, because as far as I'm aware we haven't had any reports from MNers who've received predatory PMs - we would definitely have followed up if we had, and in my post above I've appealed for anything like that to be reported directly to us as soon as possible.

I've also had a telephone conversation today, for what it's worth - no way to be certain but personally, I don't think it was set up.

Can you please clarify what you mean by set up?

Agree iris.

My mother was an emotionally manipulative so and so. She was still that when she was dying. There were oh so many dying wishes.

People reported the messages on the deleted threads days ago.

Are you saying hq haven't messaged them to ask them what happened? And get the details and advise them where to take it further? (Police for eg)

Is Zoflora about today? She might shed some light about the dodgy interactions?

Its also very difficult to nail down stuff that is in grey areas. Hypotheotcal case:
A woman could be separated from her husband. He then becomes terribly ill. She may not even live in the same house as her husband and may not ever see him, only ever seeing the children at a contact centre. She could document online a fantasy life of caring for the children and her husband and portray herself as the worried, frantic wife and mother who is desperate for support. She sets up a gofundme for a last, lifetime, memory holiday and to secure a future for 'the family'.
Legally I doubt that this would constitute fraud. It leaves a very nasty taste for those who contribute and then find out. But has she done anything illegal?

I didn't read any of the threads but have been reading the aftermath with interest. Phoning a poster to somehow verify their story is obviously pointless, they can just say anything. I remember one situation which played out over numerous threads and although it was blatant trolling from the off the OP was initially banned and after giving some sob story was allowed back and carried on trolling. She was eventually outed by some other posters who met her in rl and started doubting. Everyone was up in arms about that too. I don't know why HQ ever comment regarding the veracity of any poster, they cannot possibly know whether anyone is telling the truth and it's really irresponsible to give any credibility or endorsement.

By the way. What I said in my initial report was that there was a rewriting of history and that the other threads were not vicious and hateful. I think you should take a look at this.

So how are you saying that I said the threads were evil and horrible?

Is this STILL going on?

For fucks sake. Enough now. There's a grieving family behind this.

Some of you are behaving in a really disgusting, and quite frankly weird manner.

Please just fucking LEAVE IT NOW. Think of the people this will be affecting. Have some moral conscience.

No, we didn't say that, Mychild. What I said is that i wasn't aware that we'd received any first-hand reports - I mentioned it because it sounded though you might be saying that you had yoursefl reported first-hand experience to MNHQ or knew of someone who had?

We're going to have to leave it here for tonight I'm afraid, but we'll continue to review things at our end tomorrow. In the meantime, please do get in touch via [email protected] if you've got anything that you think would materially affect our position - otherwise please do avoid speculating on this or any other thread.

Thanks all.

Screenshots.

I did NOT say the threads were horrible. I just simply did not.

Iris ... Here's the Fraud Act... www.cps.gov.uk/legal/d_to_g/fraud_act/

I would argue an example like the one you give could certainly be categorised as fraud.

Iris - you're right.

Some people are so weird It makes me cringe.

@KateMumsnet - "above and beyond' refers to a telephone conversation between a senior member of the team and that particular poster."

Jesus Christ.

So MNHQ declared you are reasonably sure that "David" is who he says he is because a number was called and there was a male voice on the other end who told you some stuff?

I know Cote

Yip cote.

We did say this 2/3 days ago but the thread is deleted.