Hi-tech Fagin couple used Apple scam cash to fly pickpockets to UK A pair of phishing fraudsters each received long jail terms after they were convicted of making £15,000 through online scams before using the funds to finance the travel of other crooks into the UK. Constanta Agrigoroaie, 23, and Radu Savoae, 28, both of Mornington Avenue, Ilford, both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit …
"So the bosses of the phone company that overcharged 100k for sms will get mutliple life sentences?"
Only if you want to set punishments according to the aggregate financial outcome of crime, rather than number and type of offences. By that logic attempted anything can't be illegal because there's no cost, and the penalty for murder would be a reward if the victim was on any form of state welfare payment, as that would equate to a cash saving to the state. I suppose that's one way of getting the unemployed and disability figures down.
What pisses me off, is just this morning, again my bank trousered late payment fees for a credit card non-payment for an account I had set up and expressly requested the balance be transferred automatically at the end of the month. When I phoned up to complain, I had barely begun to say what the problem was and the operator had already started telling me "very sorry sir we will reverse the charges and have in fact already started to do so" Call me cynical but it was almost as though they were expecting the call and had the apology script already on the screen. No I'm not being a cynic. Happenings the drop money into the banks open pocket are far too frequent an occurrence for it to be an error. If it were truly an error, then sometimes things would happen that are in my favour. But they never are.
I wonder how many other customers have been scammed because they haven't had time to phone or haven't read their statements properly. We get annoyed about these scammers. But really who is worse? Someone who is scammer who is taking thousands, from the old weak and vulnerable, or a bank cynically working the margins as close to the line as possible diverting millions into deep trouser pockets and away from the old weak and vulnerable. Technically legal, but morally, rotten. Robbers and thieves the lot of them.
It's really not possible for me not to be cynical about banks, having worked for one of the largest. Yes, they make mistakes, but they are much more apt to behave just as SuccessCase describes. They have a responsibility to their shareholders and feel that because it affects their (upper management's) personal pockets. They feel a responsibility to their customers mostly because of regulatory pressure and if they can around it, they will and have demonstrably acted in this manner on a consistent basis.
I guess he'll be pounding his fist for the next few years. What's really stupid about this is that if they were smart enough to organize this and invest the immediate profits back into the enterprise then they had a lot of other legal options for careers with much greater long term (and legal) rewards.
"What's really stupid about this is that if they were smart enough to organize this and invest the immediate profits back into the enterprise then they had a lot of other legal options for careers with much greater long term (and legal) rewards."
... "don't ask where the first million came from"
Hush now, remember, EU membership brings jobs. In this case it brought jobs in the phishing industry, which has been declining for decades under the Common Phisheries Policy.
It also provides useful work for the police service and the prisons service who otherwise spend all day sitting around polishing their uniforms.
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