Cell
Phone Fraud
Big topic. The schemes are many.
-
You're walking down the street and someone asks to use your cell phone. She
looks harmless enough and so you say sure, and hand her the phone.
One
of two things may happen next. She runs away with your new $250 phone. Or,
as you hand it to her, a skateboarder comes by and grabs it out of her hand
and then is gone before you can possibly catch him. In either scenario you
are out a phone.
-
Note,
this same scam is prevalent among the laptop community. One moment it's
there ... and the minute it's been stolen and is on its way to the local
fence.
-
Cloning is still around. The good guys are
making it a lot harder to do it, but it is still going on.
Pre pay phones with stolen minutes, Crooks have
found numerous ways to steal minutes. Some of these ways have been discovered
and the flaws in the system have been successfully plugged. But just like any
other form of criminal fraud behavior, once the investigative community solves
one kind of fraud, the crooks rethink it and bring it back with a twist.