A Teesside man who was the victim of a SIM swap fraud and risked losing more than £50,000 is now campaigning for mobile phone companies to toughen security to protect customers.
VCAS has supported Ian Finlay, from Maltby, who was the victim of a SIM swap scam while he was out of the country on a long-planned holiday of a lifetime.
He noticed unusual activity on his credit card and bank accounts while using banking apps on his own mobile.
A total of five credit card accounts and three bank accounts were compromised with more than £50k taken fraudulently.
The banks had been suspicious of the activity and worked with Ian to make sure he wasn’t out of pocket.
However, he was told he’d likely been the victim of identity theft following a SIM card swap scam.
Ian said: “It’s difficult to describe how upsetting it is to be on the other side of the world, on a ship in the middle of the ocean and have all your cards go down
“My wife and I felt totally helpless; it was quite scary, and our first thought was ‘what have we done wrong?’ We started going over our tracks, wondering where we could have made a mistake, but we hadn’t. We started to feel very angry.”
The scam happened when a duplicate SIM was sent, by request from a fraudster to an address in London. The offender then had access to Ian’s mobile phone account, his online banking apps – and, therefore, his accounts and money.
On returning to the UK, Ian worked with his mobile phone provider to review and resolve the problem.
During this time, the fraudster managed to access Ian’s mobile account again, upgraded the account and added additional handsets.
Unhappy with the response from the phone company, Ian took his case to the Communications Ombudsman.
The Ombudsman upheld his complaint, confirming it had found ‘shortfalls’ in the mobile provider’s service. Ian was awarded £200 as a goodwill gesture, which he refused on the basis he feels the issue hasn’t been taken seriously enough.
Since the incident, Ian has been working with the PCC-funded Victim Care and Advice Service (VCAS), which supports victims of crime in Cleveland.
He is campaigning to raise awareness of the issue and to get mobile phone companies to tighten up security and processes around customer data.
“Mobile phone companies need to provide a much higher level duty of care than they currently recognise,” he said. They should be regulated in the same way as the banking sector, to improve accountability.
“Accessing someone’s mobile phone data can have significant consequences; fraudsters can access multiple bank accounts and credit cards through one phone.”
Ian has attended a VCAS fraud support session to raise awareness and help others. He has also talked at length with North East Regional Organised Crime Unit (NEROCU) and Regional Economic and Cyber Crime (RECCC) officers.
Dave Mead, manager of VCAS, said SIM swap scams and fraud of this kind can have a huge impact on victims:
“Everyone reacts differently but it’s common to feel targeted as it can feel very personal, which leads people to feel less trusting.
“Anger, anxiety, feelings of helplessness are very normal and we are here support you and help you recover.”
