UAE banks hit by wave of card fraud

Tuesday, 9 September 2008 4:20 PM

UAE banks have been hit by a wave of ATM card fraud, with criminal gangs using counterfeit cards to access local accounts from abroad, HSBC said on Tuesday.

The lender said it has refunded the "small number" of its customers have been affected and warned others to change their PIN numbers as a precaution, without giving further details about the fraud.

"Together with other UAE-based banks, we have been experiencing an attack on our local accounts from counterfeit ATM card usage abroad," Jonathan Campbell-James, regional head of security and fraud risk at HSBC Middle East, said in a statement.

"We have been pro-actively communicating to our customers via SMS to change their PIN numbers at any HSBC ATM as a precaution, and have implemented various containment strategies to minimize the threat posed."

HSBC warned customers to be wary when using ATM machines as criminal gangs can place a false card reader on the entry slot of an ATM and a micro-camera above the ATM to read the PIN as it is input.

The information can then be used to manufacture counterfeit cards, known as card skimming.

Card fraud is becoming a growing problem in the UAE, with several high-profile cases coming to light this year.

A six-man gang was jailed in March for forging dozens of credit cards and stealing more than $250,000.

The same month the UAE central bank announced that the card details of potentially thousands of residents were stolen by a gang of fraudsters who hacked into a bank's ATM machine.

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Posted by: anonymous Thursday, 18 September 2008 1:24 PM[UAE] - Abu Dhabi

My husband and I have been personally hit by this fraud and lost money from our account. I am a little confused as to how it has come about as one of your articles mentions hacking into the banking system and another talks today of them copying our cards at ATM machines. Our situation is we live in the UAE and use our card to access money from our bank account in New Zealand. Our money was drawn out of our NZ account by someone using a fake card and our pin number in the UK. We know of 6 other people in our company alone (nothing to do with the US Embassy) who have had money stolen direct from our New Zealand accounts or by goods bought on their credit cards in other countries such as Canada and Australia. The only thing we have in common is that we all live in Abu Dhabi and use the ATM's here. We know of others outside our company that have also been hit, I would say there are thousands by now. We are now stuck without cash as we have no intention to use our cards even with new pin numbers as we do not know if this situation has been resolved. We stopped our cards and within the last 24 hours we have been informed by our bank in New Zealand (Westpac) that someone again tried to withdraw from our account. The attempt failed as we had already stopped our cards. This is a very worrying situation and we would like to hear more about how the problem occured and how it is being resolved and when it will be safe to use our cards again? Anonymous reader

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Posted by: RAJKUMAR BHATIA Thursday, 11 September 2008 5:11 PM[UAE] - UAE

its right time for the Banks to understand and adopt a suitable policy to protect their customer's interest, just floating the cards in the market without having a proper strategy/security measures may neither bring a positive result to the operative banks nor beneficial to their valuable customers. We all know that Banks taking high risk on issuing the cards but do have high return from this operations. Some banks are investing major part of income to protect fraud but others are just worrying to multiply their income. At this crucial stage UAE CENTRAL BANK intervene/introducing restrictions to card issuing Banks may save the Banks/card holders losing large sums in the hands of fraudsters

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Posted by: Mike - Abu Dahbi Wednesday, 10 September 2008 6:30 PM[UAE]

Since I have been a victim of this fraud, not only have I not received a credit to my account (as bank spokesman) I now have no access to my money until the cards are replaced, combined with shortened open hours during Ramadan

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Posted by: Manoj Wednesday, 10 September 2008 3:54 PM[UAE] - Bahrain

I writing this email after reading some of the above comments regarding the poor service of HSBC. I am based in Bahrain and I feel that HSBC is the worst bank in Bahrain in terms of service offered. Their charges are also quite high when compared to other banks. One of the Bank's officers told me that the customers are having the privilage of dealing with an international Bank, so they better pay the high charges.

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Posted by: Samer Wednesday, 10 September 2008 2:22 PM[UAE] - Dubai

I haven't recieved any SMS from HSBC... does that mean i am safe or should I be worried?

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