Teens 'caught with credit card stash'

Four teenagers have been arrested on the New South Wales mid-north coast for using false IDs and credit cards to buy computer and electrical equipment in the region.

The four young men had travelled from Sydney and one is believed to be in the country illegally.

A car believed to be involved in the scam was stopped by police at Kempsey yesterday.

Officers allegedly found computers, electronic equipment and a large number of credit cards.

All four have been refused bail to face Port Macquarie Children's Court today.

news source : http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/28/2174930.htm

GE Money May Seek Partners for Non-U.S. Units (Update1)

Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- General Electric Co. is seeking potential partners or buyers for some consumer credit card, mortgage and loan units outside the U.S. to reduce riskier financial assets, according to three people with knowledge of the plan.

GE Money, the world's biggest issuer of store-branded credit cards, is reviewing its card portfolio in markets including the U.K. and Australia, said two of the people who declined to be named because the talks are private. The Fairfield, Connecticut-based company met with banks in those countries to gauge interest, they said.

A decision to sell or seek a partner for some overseas consumer-loan units would expand on Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt's announcement in December to do the same for the U.S. card unit. He wants to shift as much as $50 billion in assets to commercial finance businesses that have higher returns and lower risks of default.

``Most of the U.K. banks are trying to control rising card delinquencies,'' said Simon Willis, an analyst at NCB Group in London. ``Over the last two years growth has slowed dramatically.''

Developed countries such as the U.S. and U.K. may have rising delinquencies as their economies slow, increasing the risk of consumer defaulting on their payments. GE Money's U.S. delinquency rate rose to 5.52 percent last year from 4.93 percent. The rate outside the U.S. was little-changed at 5.3 percent.

`Evaluating Our Portfolio'

``We've maintained consistently that we're evaluating our portfolio around the world,'' said Robert Rendine, a U.S. spokesman for GE. He declined to comment on specific countries or markets.

The card unit is part of GE Money, the consumer-finance division where Immelt has said profit will be little changed this year. GE Money, which is moving its headquarters to London from Stamford, Connecticut, has about 4,000 employees in the U.K. and serves about 10 million customers, according to its Web site.

GE Money provided $25 billion of the parent company's $172.7 billion in sales last year. About 75 percent of the segment's sales and more than two-thirds of the profit came from outside the U.S. last year.

GE last year announced the sale or partnership of all of GE Money Japan's consumer unit and last month said it was seeking partners for non-card units in India.

The company is using partnerships to expand in emerging markets, including a 43 percent stake in Hyundai Capital Services Inc. in South Korea and a 26 percent stake in Turkey's Turkiye Garanti Bankasi AS.

U.K. Credit Cards

General Electric is also reviewing its U.K. consumer finance businesses, the people said.

The U.K. has more payment cards per adult than any other country in Western Europe, with average British adults carrying 2.8 cards in their wallets, according to London-based Datamonitor Plc. Even so, the U.K. credit market is forecast to grow at an average annual rate of 0.2 percent, the slowest pace in the region, Datamonitor said in a report this month.

The consumer finance unit's assets rose to $211 billion last year from $180 billion in 2006, according to General Electric's annual report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. About $34 billion of the assets are related to credit cards including private labels.

HSBC Offices

GE is not the only company that has been repositioning its credit businesses in Europe. HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe's biggest bank by market value, in October sold 338,000 U.K. credit card accounts to SAV Credit Ltd. for about 385 million pounds ($757 million).

HSBC has closed some U.S. offices and changed management and is scaling back its subprime lending after profit was eroded by bad loans. The bank will continue its U.K. cards operation for mainstream borrowers with its HSBC and First Direct brands and through retailers.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, HSBC and Barclays Plc are the biggest credit card issuers in the U.K., according to Datamonitor.

Credit card balances in Australia amounted to A$43 billion ($39.6 billion) at the end of last year, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia. The biggest card issuer in that market is Commonwealth Bank of Australia, followed by Westpac Banking Corp.

GE's credit card receivables in Australia are more than A$2 billion, according to one of the people.

GE's U.S. private-label credit-card unit operates branded cards for companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and J.C. Penney Co. The company has already received ``expressions of interest,'' for the U.S. unit, amid a slowing economy, Immelt said in December.

General Electric declined 14 cents to $33.55 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have declined 5.2 percent in the past 12 months.

news source : http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=av2nG6tjJl8Q&refer=home

New Credit Card Offers Small Business Owners Twice the Rewards on Travel and Entertainment

MCLEAN, Va. - (Business Wire) Capital One Financial Corporation (NYSE:COF) recently announced the launch of its Preferred No Hassles Miles card, a card that offers small business owners double rewards for travel and entertainment purchases.

“Travel and entertainment is a significant spend category for many small business owners. As such, we created the Preferred No Hassles Miles credit card so that our customers could earn the most rewards where they spend the most money,” said Dave Wasik, Senior Vice President, Capital One Small Business.

With no annual fee, customers earn two miles per dollar on all travel and entertainment purchases made with airlines, restaurants hotels, bowling alleys, buses/charters, car rentals, cruise lines, movie theatres, passenger railways, taxicabs/limousines, timeshares, travel agents, and video rental stores. This broadened definition of the travel and entertainment category, which has traditionally been limited to airline and restaurant transactions, coupled with Capital One’s no foreign transaction fee policy, makes this card ideal for business owners looking for more flexibility in earning rewards on their travel and entertainment purchases. Additionally, customers will earn one mile per dollar for all other purchases. Miles can be redeemed for travel, gift cards, merchandise, and even cash that can be put back into their business.

news source : http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/

When is a credit score repair service offer a scam?

By the end of 2007, Americans owed more than $915 billion in credit card debt, and the credit crunch is clearly impacting consumers as lenders are becoming more choosey about who gets loans and who doesn't. Given stricter loan and credit requirements, Better Business Bureau is warning that some companies are using the credit crunch to take advantage of consumers by promising bogus credit repair services that can be costly and in some cases illegal.

Complaints to BBB about credit repair companies have risen for three straight years, topping more than 1,400 in 2006 - a 38 percent increase since 2004. More than 400 of those complaints were not resolved, meaning BBB was not able to track down the company or the company refused to take steps to resolve the issue with the consumer.

With the economy slowing and lenders becoming increasingly picky, many people are looking for fast, easy ways to fix or even erase damage to their credit history. Consumers need to be very careful when searching for or using a credit repair agency. In some cases consumers are being charged for work they could have done on their own for free, and in the worst case scenarios, consumers are unwittingly encouraged to engage in illegal activities, without their knowledge.

news source : http://www.theadvertiser.com/

RBI mulls regulations for credit card cos

MUMBAI: Reserve Bank of India plans to chalk out regulations for companies engaged in the credit card business and proposes to make it mandatory for all players to register themselves with central bank prior to operating as issuers. "The regulations will have to be drawn out...They (companies) have to register," RBI Deputy Governor V Leeladhar told reporters on the sidelines of a CII-organised conference here today. Presently, major credit card providers in the country like Visa and Master Card are operating in affiliation with banks. However, the banking regulator has not set any time-frame for the proposal, Leeladhar said. "This is a new area we will have to look at," he said. Parliament has recently passed the Payment and Settlement Act, 2007, while the regulatory framework for implementing the law is currently being worked out, Leeladhar said. The Act would give more powers to the apex bank in the payment and settlement matters, including in those related to credit cards, Leeladhar said. According to industry sources, non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), not affiliated with banks, are presently not allowed to engage in the credit card business. News source : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/

Moody's says bad debt on credit cards on rise

The company's prediction of rising amounts of bad credit card debt until some time in 2009 carries "no immediate ratings implications" for securities backed by the receivables, according to a statement yesterday from Moody's, a credit-ratings firm.

"Both the charge-off and the delinquency rates are clearly on the rise and, in the coming months, will likely continue to rise," William Black, a senior vice president, said in the statement.

More Americans are struggling to repay their card debt, with charge-off rates rising from the depressed levels that followed a spike before bankruptcy law changes in 2005.

In November, the most recent month for which data are available, the rate was below 5 percent, less than the historical average of 5.5 percent, according to Moody's. After the last recession, charge-offs peaked at 7.1 percent in May 2003, Moody's said.

Rising credit-card losses so far have prompted only a "moderate" tightening of standards at issuers such as American Express Co., Capital One Financial Corp., and Discover Financial Services, Eric Wasserstrom, a UBS AG analyst, said last week.

Prime credit-card charge-offs increased by 0.15 percentage points last month, to 5.36 percent, Fitch Ratings said. Fitch expects charge-offs rates to rise at least 35 percent this year.

Moody's said it expects other measures of card performance, such as the amount of repayments by borrowers and the amount of yield charged on the debt, to "remain strong."

news source : http://www.boston.com/

Are high-tech credit cards putting your identity in danger?

By WINK News

Story Created: Feb 10, 2008 at 1:16 PM EST

Story Updated: Feb 10, 2008 at 1:16 PM EST

FORT MYERS, Fla. - It used to be that paying with cash was the quickest way through a checkout line.

But that may be changing.

WINK News and Consumer Reports takes a look at a touchless technology that's supposed to get you in and out of a store with a wave of your hand.

Visa says it's literally the next wave for consumers. Paying for something by waving your card in front of a special reader. Visa's "paywave" technology is offered by 41 card-issuing banks around the world and accepted at more than 32-thousand retailers.

The cards use microchips and radio waves to transmit encrypted information, with the card, you don't need to sign for most purchases under 25 dollars.

That means speedier checkouts.

Sure it's convenient, but Greg Daugherty of Consumer Reports Money Adviser says there could be a downside to waving all that information through the air.

"The card issuers deny it, but some people think this technology exposes you to greater security risks, such as identity theft. There's concern about a tactic called skimming, where a thief could use a portable card reader to literally skim your encrypted information out of the air," Daugherty explains.

Visa insists the data on your card can only be processed by secure readers at authorized merchants. Plus, paywave cards are covered by Visa's zero-liability policy, meaning you're not responsible if a thief uses your card. but there are other pitfalls.

"You may not get a receipt on transactions under twenty-five dollars unless you ask for one, which could be a problem if you need to return something," says Daugherty.

A study last year by smart card alliance found people spend an average of 20 to 30 percent more when using touchless technology. So, be careful if you wave and pay.

You could find yourself with some unexpected debt.

If you decide to apply for a "touchless" pay card, Consumer Reports says be sure to read the fine print. Double-check to see whether the card has penalty fees, which can add up to a lot of money in short order.

news source : http://www.winknews.com/news/consumer/15491936.html

Spotting Credit Repair, Counseling Scams

CBS) More and more consumers are turning to credit counseling and credit repair agencies for help getting out from under a mountain of accumulated credit card debt. While some are legitimate, says Early Show money maven Ray Martin, others are only out to fleece you. How can you tell one from another? Martin offers advice in this column.


With a perfect storm of falling housing values, rising loan defaults and a slowing economy, more folks are struggling to manage their debts, and more will turn to companies that sell credit repair and credit counseling services.

Many of these companies aren't regulated by federal law, so anyone can open a credit counseling business. As a result, the services provided can vary widely from one company to the next.

The trick is to not get confused by the similar names and similar claims.

If you are struggling with debt, a legitimate credit counseling company can help. But a bad one can do more damage.

Here’s a guide to help you know what to look for.

A Few Bad Apples

Many credit counseling companies are set up as non-profit corporations. This can create an appearance that these companies exist solely to look out for you -- that they exist to provide a public service. This nonprofit status enables them to gain a marketing edge by creating an image that implies, “We’re the good guys. We’re a non-profit credit counseling company!”

Unfortunately, in some cases, the services provided come with a hidden agenda and lots of hidden fees. The most famous example was Ameridebt, which agreed to shut down its debt management operation in a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, which had charged that Ameridebt deceived consumers into paying at least $170 million in hidden fees when it claimed to be a nonprofit that would teach people to manage their finances for no upfront fee.

Credit Repair Shops

These outfits claim that, for a fee, they'll clean up your credit report so you can get another loan, get a better mortgage, better insurance rates, or even a job. Essentially, they offer to manipulate or even manufacture credit report information about you that creates the appearance that you have been a responsible consumer of credit. Often the promise includes removing all late payments and other derogatory information from your credit report.

Of course, to perform this service -- who wouldn’t want to start over with a “clean slate” when it comes to your credit reports -- you simply have to pay a few thousand dollars and agree to a few credit schemes.

Tip Off to the Rip Off

One of the credit repair schemes is to “create a new you” by applying for and obtaining an Employer Identification Number for you to use instead of your Social Security Number on new credit applications. Another trick is to use “piggybacking,” which is where you are added as an authorized user on another individual’s credit account, which of course has a good history of timely payments, the objective being that the other person's account with the good history appears on your credit report, which increases your credit score.

What you should know is this: Aside from being dishonest, these scams are illegal. It is a federal crime to lie on a loan application or obtain and use an Employee ID number under false pretenses. And the claims to remove negative information from your credit report? No one can legally remove accurate and timely negative information from your credit report.

news source : http://www.cbsnews.com/

Roadshow: Irritating credit card limits are based on fear of fraud

Q With the expectation that gas prices will go higher, my complaint is credit card limits of $60 or $75 at the pump. With full-size cars, I am always a gallon or so short of filling up, which I like to do to keep track of mileage to gauge how my vehicles are running. And with our trucks (we have horses), it takes two or sometimes three iterations of swiping to fill up. Why do they do this when seemingly everyone will hit these limits at current prices? Call me aggravated.

Dave Biasotti
Gilroy
A Limits are set by the credit card companies and there is a reason - fraud. Gas station folks say they almost always eat fraud losses when a stolen card is used, something more likely to happen at a station where there may be no face-to-face encounter with a clerk. Also, if station owners do not abide by these limits, the penalties can be stiff. The limit can range from $60 to $75.

Q It used to be that gas would flow quickly out of the pump until the last 10 cents of my transaction. Then it would trickle out until done. That number started to gradually increase over the past few years to the point that at some pumps, the gas slows down 50 cents before my transaction is done. It really ticks me off. It sometimes takes just as long for that last 50 cents to slowly trickle out as it did for the previous $20. I think it's a big scam to make money off customers not willing to wait around over a measly 10, 20 or 50 cents. I

bet others grumble about it as well.

Rhya Gilliam
Newark
A So far, no one has. There is a reason - higher prices. Gas pumps are not capable of going full speed, then shutting off just at the right time. When gas sold for $1 a gallon, it would begin slowing down during the last 15 cents. At $3 a gallon, it begins to slow during the last 45 cents. As fuel gets more expensive, it needs more pennies before stopping. If you use a credit or debit card and want $40 worth of gas and if the dispenser went to $40.01, the bank charges the full $40.01 to the station but $40 to you. So they slow the dispenser.

Q There is a gas station near where I live that has two prices - one if you pay cash and one if you pay by credit card. I thought the state banned this years ago?

Steve Pelovsky

A There is an aggravating loophole. It is legal to offer a discount when motorists pay with cash and another price when paying by credit card.

news source : http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_8182990

Masked men invade Stony Brook dorm

A card game among Stony Brook University students took a frightening turn early Tuesday when two masked men entered their dormitory, demanded money and hit a young man in the head after the students said they didn't have cash, law enforcement officials said.

News of the attempted burglary came on the same day police announced they were searching for a man believed to have stolen more than 20 credit cards from women's purses in eight university buildings. Assistant Chief Douglas Little of the university police said investigators do not believe the credit card thefts are related to the attack.

The men wearing ski-type masks entered an open dorm room where six students were playing cards about 12:30 a.m. One of the students said he was hit with what may have been a pistol, but did not require medical attention, police said.
The men were driven away by an accomplice in a dark-colored sedan, possibly a Mercedes-Benz, university police said. Little said the burglars apparently knew a card game was going on, but it was not known how they entered the Eisenhower College building, which requires an identity card.

"There are strong leads," Little said at a news conference.

The credit card thief has targeted unoccupied academic offices, discreetly stealing the cards from purses, leaving many women unaware they were burglarized until they try to make a purchase, police said. The man's image has been captured on electronic surveillance, and he has used the cards to buy more than $25,000 worth of railroad tickets, clothes and Target gift cards in Long Island and Queens, police said.

"It's a crime of opportunity," said Little, who added that police were increasing patrols and urging students and faculty to take basic safety precautions and report any suspicious activity. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 800-220-TIPS. A cash reward of up to $5,000 is being offered for tips leading to an arrest.

Last fall, a rash of attacks on students prompted heightened security. In October, two students reported being accosted, one in her dormitory and the other while jogging. Two students also reported being robbed in separate incidents involving two men, one with a knife. One of those students was arrested later on a charge of falsely reporting a crime.

news source : http://www.newsday.com/news/local/crime/ny-lisuny0206,0,6742163.story

That hairshirt! I must have it

Heaven forbid that I should accuse the Centre for Policy Studies (founders, Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher) of having a sense of humour. But it could hardly choose a better week to launch its report Why Do We Feel So Broke? Today is not all pancakes: to the liturgically literate it is Shrove Tuesday, harbinger of Lent. Carnival excesses are merely carne vale, a farewell to fleshly pleasure. A Victorian Nonconformist summed it up with delicious February gloom:

There's winter on the hills today/ The sad wind soughs o'er churchyard knolls/ And weary nature seems to say/ “Tis Lenten-tide for sinful souls.”

Rather less poetically, the CPS says that stagnating earnings, tax increases, excessive debt, rising interest rates and utility bills are squeezing average family finances to the tune of £1,300 less disposable income. Rightish newspapers claim that the “coping classes” are only just scraping by on £88,000 a year, particularly if they dare not consign their young to a failing local school or their aged parents to the mercy of social services. Meanwhile left-wing commentators retort that if it's tough for them, it's worse for the poor. And for the nostalgic we have helpful figures showing that in unglamorous 1958 households spent a much larger percentage on booze, fags and fun.

Then, of course, there's the credit crunch and the banking panic, aggravated by the fact that it now looks as if the Government can't even give away Northern Rock by promising to pay its debts for ever. The latest amusing manifestation of this bankerly flap is from Egg, which (while still advertising its 0 per cent interest deals and instant loans, I notice) has abruptly sacked 161,000 credit card customers on the ground that they are “high risk”. Whereon hordes of them converged on media outlets, bristling with indignation and waving immaculate records of full monthly repayment, thus demonstrating that the “high risk” that worries the online bank is the risk of itself not making any money out of these spoilsport wise virgins.

That's the nub of it. Banks have flown high for 30 years by promoting carnival excess, and politicians have been glad of it because consumer booms create an illusion of general wellbeing. But too much of it is insubstantial puffball. I was in my twenties when the first popular credit cards appeared (before that only sugar-daddies had Barclaycard or Diners). I remember how Access scandalised the cautious with the brilliantly corrupting slogan “takes the waiting out of wanting”, a philosophy now embraced by everyone from Derek Conway's sons to the late-night lad whose knife takes the waiting out of his wanting your iPod.

A few years after that there was another frisson of scandal and (perfectly accurate) predictions of debt when supermarkets started letting shoppers use the plastic for food shopping. Now we know that we throw away a third of all the food we buy; join the dots. Credit card use was trumpeted as merely “convenient” and “secure” - which is indeed the case for the minority who pay off monthly in full and lose the banks money.

Mainly, credit has just helped to confuse the concept of money-I-have with the rival concept of stuff-I-want. It led us straight to the dreadful feature writers' insistence on applying the description “must have” to every luxury item, from flimsy shoes to £6,000 liposuction to reduce blokes' flabby chests (4,000 last year). Shouting “No, I bloody mustn't!” and throwing the Sunday supplements at the wall has had no effect on curbing this. Nationwide, plastic twinkles ever brighter until the inevitable moment when it melts. Now we have regular reports of mortgage interest and even tax payments being met by credit card.

Mortgages themselves went mad 20 years ago: I well remember dinner-party pundits saying that the only sensible thing was to take out as big a loan as you could get, preferably 100 or 105 per cent of house value, because on property you “never lose”. When I asked what would happen if prices dropped, there were pitying giggles as if I had suggested going back to a currency of cowrie shells.

And, to take the irrationality still further, we now know that bankers themselves can behave like students flashing their first plastic: step forward Adam Applegarth of Northern Rock, who lent out millions in money he didn't have but reckoned he could probably borrow. Until he couldn't. Thanks to a guilty panic by the Chancellor, the “coping” taxpayer classes will now lose thousands apiece to keep the Rock afloat in the cause of “consumer confidence”. Ironic, since consumer overconfidence got us in trouble in the first place.

But cheer up, coping classes. The architects of the liturgical year got it right: after Christmas comes Lent with fasting and repentance. The churches, I notice, are working up a more cheerful spin with a campaign “Love Life Live Lent”, trying to play down the austerity and associate the 40 days of wilderness with upbeat acts of kindness and wacky new Facebook applications. But they may be missing the Zeitgeist. My memory of convent-school Lents is actually rather satisfying: you give up a few pleasures, reacquaint yourself with mild hunger, remind your body that it is there to serve, not dominate, you, and make space for reflection, only occasionally dreaming of chocolate eggs to come.

That's the answer: wallow in the Lenten atmosphere. Put the waiting into wanting, ignore fashion, make sinister Spanish omelettes out of everything in the fridge including half-thawed oven-chips and aged broccoli. Bid farewell to luxury, carne vale, shrug on that must-have hairshirt. In a perverse way it might be quite fun.

news source : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/

CONSUMER REPORTS: Cut back on your credit cards

KUSA - Consumer Reports' Money Adviser says cutting down on your credit cards is one of the simplest ways to streamline your financial life.

Most people only need one or two credit cards. If you carry an American Express or Discover card, you might want to consider adding a MasterCard or a Visa because they're more widely accepted.

If you carry a balance, a Web site such as a BankRate.com or CardRatings.com can help you find a credit card with a low, fixed interest rate. If your current interest rate is too high, look into transferring your balance to another card. But make sure you read the fine print. If you transfer a balance to a card with a 0 percent introductory rate, that 0 percent probably only applies to the transferred amount, not to any new charges. So you want to put any new purchases on a different card.

When it comes to retail store credit cards, which typically have sky-high interest rates, dump them unless you use the perks they offer, such as free shipping for online purchasing and special savings for cardholders. But don't close too many cards at once. It might hurt your credit score. If you have, say, a $5,000 balance on seven credit cards, you'll actually have a better credit score than if you have the same $5,000 balance on two cards.

To keep your credit cards' paperwork under control, shred your bills after one year. Unless you're using credit-card statements to support tax deductions, you don't need to save them. It might be the easiest few pounds you'll lose this new year.

Thanks to federal law, you're entitled to a free copy of your credit report each year from each of the three major credit reporting agencies. Don't be confused by agencies offering to sell you the same information.

Consumer Reports has no commercial relationship with any advertiser or sponsor appearing on this Web site.

news source : http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=85661