Tag Archives: Fraud

Lost Property, Mobile Phones, Police, Recipero

Recipero appoint David Dillard to accelerate development and rollout of connected-device intelligence solutions across America

dd-blk-thumb-1Recipero is delighted to announce the appointment of David Dillard as Managing Director – Americas.

David joins Recipero with a reputation for extending mobile technologies across multiple platforms with revolutionary revenue models that cover banking, media, entertainment, real estate, and retail.  Over the past 20 years he has held senior positions at Verizon Wireless, Uni-Mobile, Advertising.com, Point.com, and Sprint PCS.  This experience will assist Recipero’s continued development across enterprise, Government and consumer channels.

Recipero, the connected-device industry’s trusted 3rd party, are device-led data experts delivering critical and timely intelligence to the wireless industry, insurance companies, law enforcement and retailers and recyclers. Solutions focus on with fraud prevention, transaction verification, device due-diligence, crime investigation and device ownership registration.

Providing a “clear title” for buyers and sellers of connected-devices, Recipero solutions work to ensure a smooth carrier re-activation experience. Consumers and enterprises have lost confidence in buying or selling a used cell phone due to the growing issue of a device being blacklisted when it has been lost or stolen or has an outstanding contract/lease against it.

Recipero provide connected-device history reports that reveals if a phone, tablet or other mobile device has been lost, stolen or is associated with an unsatisfied lease or contract.

Recipero has aggregated over over a billion data records over the past 15 years which drives over 5 million inquires per month from law enforcement, consumers and enterprise. Users include Sprint, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Brightstar, Assurant, GameStop, Gazelle and Ingram Micro.

Mark Harman, Group CEO Recipero, said:

“I am delighted to welcome David to our US team. We are excited about continuing our investment into building a carrier-grade team to service many of the US and Americas biggest businesses. David’s understanding of the wireless landscape and experience working in and with carriers will be invaluable as we accelerate US growth.”

David Dillard, Managing Director – Americas, said:

“I’m joining Recipero at a very exciting time as the connected device industry is starting to wake up to the increasing costs of fraud and crime. Recipero have created a powerful platform that I am looking forwarding to rapidly developing and expanding the footprint of users.”

Crime, Fraud, Mobile Phones, Police, Recipero

Jack Wraith MBE appointed as Recipero’s UK Government & Regulatory Affairs Adviser

Jack Wraith MBEWe are pleased to welcome Jack Wraith MBE to Recipero as Government and Regulatory Affairs Adviser. As people familiar with the telecoms industry will know, Jack has extensive experience in the area of telecommunications fraud and risk and has held several lead roles most recently as CEO of TUFF (the Telecommunications United Kingdom Fraud Forum).

Jack has also served as Chair of The Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum (MICAF), and former Executive Secretary to the Communications Crime Strategy Group (CCSG). In tandem with these roles Jack has also acted as Chairman to a number of fraud and crime related committees within the UK, including Joint Chairmanship of the ACPO Telecommunications Data Communications Group.

Jack’s role at Recipero is to lead liaison with Government, regulators, law enforcement and mobile operators to ensure a coordinated and effective approach to mobile device fraud and criminality is adopted and maintained.

Mark Harman, CEO Recipero said:

Our on-going liaison with law enforcement and Government continues to be a fundamental part of our business in the UK, US, and other jurisdictions in which we operate.

Jack’s experience and his joining us in this important role will be integral to those on-going partnerships and reinforces Recipero’s commitment to deliver the best fraud and crime reduction solutions to the industry.

Links:

Telecommunications United Kingdom Fraud Forum (TUFF)

The Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum (MICAF)

CheckMEND, CheckMEND USA, Crime, eBay, Mobile Phones, Police, Recipero

Gazelle – Leading USA consumer electronics reseller deploys CheckMEND to help identify fraud

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Gazelle, one of the USA’s leading high-end consumer trade-in sites, today announced it has deployed CheckMEND, a cutting-edge tool, designed to more accurately detect potentially stolen goods, including smart phones, tablets and computers.

Developed by Recipero, CheckMEND is the largest World’s largest consumer electronics background report service, the system compiles data from all major wireless carriers and law enforcement entities across the USA, providing the most complete database of devices available. Gazelle is the first consumer electronics trade-in site to deploy CheckMEND and collaborated with Recipero to tailor the product to help address the growing incidences of consumer electronics theft.

For Gazelle the introduction of CheckMEND comes at a good time with the proliferation of high-end consumer electronics theft. In fact, New York City’s police commissioner recently reported that Apple products now represent more than 40 percent of stolen property in the city and San Francisco police report that nearly half of all robberies in the city in the past year have been cell phone related.

We are dedicated to providing the best customer experience possible, and part of that promise is to protect each customer’s personal data

said Israel Ganot, CEO, Gazelle.

We always take security very seriously. With the CheckMEND deployment, we’re taking this to a new level, committing not only to the protection of a customer’s personal data when we receive the device, but also going the extra mile to ensure that any devices we accept are being sold by the rightful owner and to discourage and prevent theft of consumer electronics.

Recipero’s CheckMEND service makes it possible to do a more thorough screening by checking a vast set of carrier and law enforcement sources for a much broader set of consumer electronics. CheckMEND is capable of comparing each inquiry against more than 150 billion records of information, including more than 50 billion items.

For more information please visit the following websites.

Visit Gazelle: www.gazelle.com

Visit CheckMEND: www.checkmend.com

Visit Recipero: www.recipero.com

 

CheckMEND, CheckMEND USA, Mobile Phones

Check before you buy and only then you shall be rewarded

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I have just been watching BBC News and one of their features was ‘Why shopping online could reward’.

The feature really focused on the fact that shoppers who like to spend their money online could also be earning at the same time and used an example from a woman who would only purchase items once she had sold a few on eBay and made a small profit.  Great example of how online shopping can really work well with the current credit crunch. However, I do wish the BBC had highlighted some of the risks involved in online shopping, like CNBC have done.

Yesterday we launched in the US and have already seen some coverage including from the Denver Post and it states we aim to curb the cybercrime of selling suspect second-hand goods. Hopefully there will be more to follow.

Anyway, hopefully the USA launch will be just as successful as the UK. According to the US Census Bureau the population of USA currently stands at 304,381,960 with:
• One birth every  7 seconds
• One death every 13 seconds
• One international migrant (net) every 29 seconds
• Net gain of one person every… 10 seconds

From the global population of internet users 27% are in the US and having read a lot of online articles and blogs e-fencing is proving to be a problem which the US are struggling to control. E-fencing laws have been discussed as being essential to combat organised retail crime. However, CheckMEND should now be an answer to their prayers, so let’s see how it goes.

This is what we do best and we have had plenty of stories from people who didn’t discover CheckMEND in time…

For example; Andrew Gudelajtis, from Mansfield, bought a Vodafone Nokia mobile phone from eBay for his wife. The phone arrived in a sealed box and was sold as being brand new, but after using it for six weeks the mobile phone stopped working.

He decided that he should use CheckMEND to check the IMEI number on its database. The search came back and identified the phone as being stolen or blocked. Unfortunately Andrew was then unable to re-trace the eBay seller and is left with a phone that doesn’t work and at the moment he is pursuing Vodafone to see if they can help – either by unblocking the phone or chasing the seller.

Hopefully he will have some luck at some point, but it is a great example of why you should use ‘CheckMEND before you buy’ or insist on sellers having a CheckMEND report. Or as I mentioned within my last post we should push for eBay to insist all sellers conduct a CheckMEND report!

Any questions – please fire them this way!

CheckMEND, CheckMEND USA, Crime, Police

The Serial Entrepreneur

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For those of you who have heard about it, but wondered what CheckMEND is and how it came about I thought I would give you the low down on why and how it all began.

Me, founder of CheckMEND.com

Lost my phone!

In 2000 I lost my phone on the London Underground and went to the lost property office to try to find it. However, I was then faced with the task of providing a serial number or what we also know as the IMEI number. But in 2000 no one had really heard of what an IMEI number was let alone know their own!

Anyway after eventually finding my IMEI number and recovering my phone, I realised that all modern consumer electronic products have a unique serial number and that without them there was little way of distinguishing one item from another. Thus, I formed the idea that there was a need in the market for a pre-loss or theft registration service containing these serial numbers.

Previous career path

My career has always involved providing services to the consumer, back in 2000, at the age of 40; I sold my chain of restaurants, bars and leisure facilities, with the aim of taking early retirement and relaxing after a very full working life… until the idea for CheckMEND hit me.

I decided to start up a company called Recipero (latin meaning to retain or recover), with a view to building a company that provided a range of products and services based on the accumulation, organisation and analysis of information relating to personal property ownership, associated criminality, fraud and illegal trading.

The simple pre-loss registration database:

The starting point was with a simple pre-loss registration database, but it quickly became apparent that there was value in the analysis of the data and potential to provide HPI-type data for consumer electronics. This was reinforced at the time with the explosion of online auction sites and the willingness of people to buy and sell second-hand goods online. All at the same time as the huge increase in the theft of mobile phones and other mobile devices such as laptops, ipods and the like.
The next three years was spent populating the MEND data warehouse and building partnerships across the mobile industry, with the likes of Carphone Warehouse and mobile phone networks. The police forces were also a vital partner for me.
Eventually, the system grew and now contains billions of pieces of discrete information and is accessed over a million times a month by the mobile phone industry, all UK Police forces, major insurers, the second hand trade, recyclers and the public.
CheckMEND.com was launched in 2006 and the CheckMEND database is now used extensively by second hand trade and the public the most common use of CheckMEND by the general public is for when they are buying or selling items from online auction sites like ebay.

Taking it international:

I can now safely say the company is well established and we are starting to focus on business outside the UK. 2008 will see two new launches for CheckMEND.com. One in the US, which the Recipero and CheckMEND teams are extremely excited about, with the U.S. being the largest market for consumer electronics. Not only that, we have already begun the process of launching in Asia too.

Obviously the road to where we are today didn’t all run as smoothly as suggested above, many a challenge was faced and problem overcome, but this is the CheckMEND story… so far…

Have a look at the youtube video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zcm9VFNvuQ