Credit card thief leaves victim with $10,000 debt

Patrice Gaffaney's $10,000 bill. Photo / Herald on Sunday

The victim of a credit card thief who ran up a $10,000 bill in 16 days wants banks to rethink the way they issue cards.

Patrice Gaffaney was stunned to get a statement showing the huge debt on a Kiwibank MasterCard she didn't even want.

The card was couriered to her Auckland home but stolen before she received it.

Red-faced bank officials have admitted "human failure" played a part in the mix-up and said staff at the courier company were under unvestigation.

Credit card fraud is growing and latest police figures show the number of cases has more than doubled since 2005.

Gaffaney, a journalist, is a Westpac customer but decided to switch to Kiwibank in August.

"Part of that switch was going to be a MasterCard. But we pulled out at the last minute and decided to stay with Westpac," she said.

Last month Gaffaney received a letter dated August 27 saying she had been approved for a Kiwibank MasterCard which was ready to be issued.

She said the credit card must have been sent out before she cancelled the switch to Kiwibank and thought nothing more about it until receiving the first statement saying she owed almost $10,500.

"I just about dropped dead ... I think I stopped breathing."

The thief had forged Gaffaney's signature and used the card 51 times between August 27 and September 11.

The purchases totalled $10,425.15, including $2152.96 spent at service stations, $3129.99 at electronics stores, $594.24 at liquor stores and $810 on sunglasses.

"I rang the bank and I must have sounded a bit hysterical," she said. "The little bastards have had a field day, they've been everywhere."

Kiwibank head of fraud George Hiotakis said the card was sent by courier on August 26. The courier was supposed to get Gaffaney's signature but she was not home so the card was left at the address.

Hiotakis said it appeared the card was stolen from Gaffaney's letterbox. A processing error meant the card arrived at Gaffaney's address before the notification letter and that process had since been reviewed.

Hiotakis said the debt had been written off and the theft was being thoroughly investigated, but no Kiwibank staff were in the spotlight.

The card was created at a private company and collected from there by the courier.

Hiotakis would not name the courier company and said its staff had not been eliminated from the inquiry. However, the bank was still using its services and said the company was cooperating fully.

He was confident the thief would be found.

"The card was cancelled on September 18. They tried to do a mobile phone top-up after that. We are working with that telecommunications provider to pursue that.

Gaffaney hoped the culprit would be found, but was more concerned about the way banks issue credit cards.

"They've got to wear $10,000-worth of debt ... they need to rethink the way they get cards to people."

Hiotakis said no changes would be made immediately. The bank was constantly reviewing procedures but did want to make accessing credit cards "like Fort Knox" for customers.

Most cards were sent out "dead" meaning customers had to go to their nearest branch or ATM to activate them. But some cards, like the one sent to Gaffaney, only needed a signature.

Hiotakis said ideally all cards would be sent out "dead", but that inconvenienced some customers.

"That's where we would like to end up but we've got to work around customer impact."

* Would you credit it?

- In January Chinese tourist Chee Thiong Teh was jailed for 18 months after pleading guilty to cloning credit cards under fake names. He used the cards to spend more than $40,000 in Auckland, Christchurch and Queenstown.

- Malaysians Suliaman Bin Haron and his wife Saerah Binte Men pleaded guilty to credit card fraud of $66,000 as part of the same scam. Their purchases included Louis Vuitton handbags, clothing, food and jewellery.

- Two illegal immigrants were convicted of stealing almost $35,000 from North Island cash machines using cloned credit cards in 2008. Jan Scutariu and Andrei Raileanu glued an electronic skimming device to a Westpac ATM, secretly recording people's bank details of thousands of people. They had a hidden camera trained on the keypad or looked over the shoulders of users to obtain PIN numbers.

- In 2007 Enayatullah Mohmand stole up to $12,000 a day after breaking into cars in upmarket Auckland suburbs and taking credit cards. Using the alias "Romeo", Mohmand conned shop assistants into cashing stolen cheques and accepting stolen credit cards. He spent up to $2000 a day on expensive women's clothing, liquor and car parts.