Fears over websites offering ‘DIY fraud kits’
WEBSITES are offering highly realistic falsified documents from Scottish utility companies and banks which are being used as DIY fraud kits, the Sunday Herald can reveal. Products on offer include personalised bills from Scottish Power or Scottish Hydro for £25 each. Some of the companies behind the documents claim they are being sold as ‘a prank’.
These can help to create a false name and address. So, too, can another product being pushed – six months’ worth of bank statements, complete with two or three pages of fictitious transactions each, for just £200.
Banks on offer include giants of the Scottish high street such as Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Scotland, Clydesdale, Nationwide, Halifax and Santander.
Websites stress that they only provide papers as “novelties” or as “replacements” for genuine documents that have been lost. Other documents on offer online include fake proof of age – aimed at underage drink- ers – and payslips. Some claim to provide driving licences and passports. This is on top of the longstanding business in fake degrees. Despite stressing, for legal reasons, that their products are fake, sites want to make clear their quality is high. One says: “The documents that we develop are of great quality and appear just as great as the original ones.”
Major banks and utility firms are well aware of the issue. The Sunday Herald understands that the body representing the big six power firms, Energy UK, will discuss fake bills next month at one of its regular meetings.
A spokesman said: “We are aware that so-called novelty bills are available from certain websites and that they represent a risk, however small, of copyright infringement and fraudulent behaviour.
“We will track incidents across the industry to see how big the problem is and the best course of action to deal with it.”
HOWEVER, law enforcers are concerned that smaller businesses could be conned into providing credit or other services to people with faked documents. The Scottish Business Resilience Centre – a body funded by Police Scotland, Scottish Fire and Rescue, the Scottish Government and major private businesses, including banks – has issued warnings about these websites.
A spokesman said: “Organisations that require proof of identity from clients or proof of qualification for employment should take note of the commercial availability of documents of this nature.
“Fraudsters and other criminally-motivated individuals and organisations may use the services offered on these websites to create an “air of respectability”, create false identities or even vary detail to facilitate their criminal enterprises. “Fake documentation offered online includes passports, bank statements, utility bills, educational certificates, driving licences, references and many more.”
Among the most prominent sites are replaceyourdocs.com, fake-documents.com and legalfakes.com. At least two sites are registered in Stockholm by Gottfrid Svartholm, a convicted hacker and fraudster better known by his online alias Anakata.
Svarthholm was released from a Swedish jail last year after serving three years for his part in the notorious Pirate Bay copyright case. Svartholm was one of the founders of Pirate Pay, a torrent site that provided access to vast quantities of copyrighted material. He also helped facilitate the 2010 release of footage of a 2007 helicopter gunship attack in Iraq.