As promised, this Secret Crime Fighter episode is a special Christmas edition! Instead of helping you understand a typology that someone else has already seen, I went and asked the best Secret Crime Fighter I know about what typologies they think might happen over the Christmas and post-Christmas sales period. The result is a fascinating look into the world of gaming, and the demand for new consoles. Keep reading to understand how your customers might be scammed, and how you can stop your financial product from being used to launder funds.

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The Typology

Did Someone Say Playstation 5?

It has been 7 years since Sony and Microsoft released their last gaming consoles, and so with both dropping new versions this winter, it’s no surprise that both the Xbox Series X and Ps5 are in high demand. Add to that the additional time people are spending at home this year, new lockdowns and stay at home orders across the world, and Covid-19 and Brexit causing supply chain issues, and we have ourselves a nice little supply and demand issue.

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Both companies are struggling to produce as many consoles as they’d have liked, and retailers are selling out. When new stock is announced, websites are crashing due to demand. And as you seasoned crime fighters will know, whenever there is demand for something, criminals will capitalise on it.

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Classified Information

As retailers sell out of the consoles, people are very likely to look to classifieds sites like Gumtree and eBay. A quick search throws up more than 700 ads for the Ps5 on eBay, with the price ranging from £100 to £3,500. While some of these will be genuine Ps5’s and a buyer might just get ripped off, our Secret Crime Fighter believes a good number of these will be fake ads.

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This might play out in a few different ways…

1. A buyer looks to purchase a console from a classifieds site. The seller begins communication with them via some kind of messaging or social media platform. Because of the demand, the seller says that they need a deposit in order to hold the console for the buyer. The buyer sends the seller £50-100, and never hears from the seller again.
2. A buyer looks to purchase a console from a classifieds site. They transfer the money and wait to receive the package. When the package turns up, it is something else of a similar weight, such as books or cat food, but definitely not a new generation gaming console.

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Bonus Material

Because we find this so interesting, here’s some bonus material demonstrating how organised the criminals that carry out these sorts of scams are.

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There are reports of criminals using police tactics to get their hands on these gaming consoles. They are being tipped off by insiders, so they know which road the lorries full of consoles will be on, at what time, and what the number plates will be. They block the roads with multiple cars, and steal the consoles from the backs of the lorries.

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And even more extraordinary, there are reports that criminals sometimes don’t even make the lorries stop - they are driving alongside them, climbing out of the cars attached to ropes, cutting holes in the back of the lorries, and throwing products back to the cars!

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Stopping the Typology

Our Secret Crime Fighter has laid out some controls that you might want to consider implementing so that your customers don’t fall victim to these scams, and so you don’t inadvertently launder criminal proceeds.

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First and foremost, customer education is needed. Banks and financial institutions should be proactively engaging with customers to warn them against sending anyone holding fees or deposits via bank transfer.

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Our Crime Fighter thinks that new or dormant accounts might be used to receive the money from these scams, so transaction monitoring rules looking for references such as “Playstation”, “Ps5”, “Xbox”, etc., on new or dormant accounts could be used to flag accounts for review.

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In terms of money movements, looking for £50-100 payments, where the money is immediately sent out or withdrawn at ATMs might flag suspicious accounts.

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And in terms of customer profiles, it is often the case that under 18s are involved in purchase scams like this, so conducting more due diligence on your younger customer books might be helpful.

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Thanks for reading our latest Secret Crime Fighters newsletter. If you have an interesting typology that you’d like to share, we’d love to hear about it! Please email us at [email protected].