Mastercard in my name is a fraud

S.B. writes: I received a welcome letter addressed to me and containing a Mastercard and account details, all from Cashplus. I had not applied for these, so I called Cashplus but they said they could do nothing unless I reported this to Action Fraud and obtained a crime number. I did this, though Action Fraud told me that as nobody had lost anything, there had not been any fraud.

And a few days after I gave the crime number to Cashplus, I received a letter from them, asking for a clutch of identity documents. WHOEVER applied to open the current account with Cashplus and obtain a Mastercard used basic information about your personal circumstances.

Cashplus told me it had used normal banking procedures to confirm your details, but those checks would, of course, have been into things like your appearance on the electoral register, or your personal credit record. They would not have proved that the application actually came from you.

Cashplus told me: ‘Mr B being alerted to the impersonation attempt is a result of these procedures working as they should.’ As I see it though, the Mastercard was issued with no proof of identity, after which the only safety net was that the card went to your address.

If you lived at a multioccupation address, it would not have been hard for the fraudster to grab the card. I put this to Cashplus and was told this would not be easy, as the culprit ‘would need to illegally steal or access their neighbour’s personal information’.

It’s unthinkable, of course, that a card fraudster might steal personal information.