Ross - 10:09 pm on Aug 23, 2000 (gmt 0)

Hi,
We run a fishing tackle site in the UK, and have persistent attempts at fraud from people in Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Croatia etc. Most of the time their orders are so ridiculous that we simply bin them, but we've recently had a couple of charge-backs where we'd filled orders that purported to come from the US, for delivery to Macedonia, that were supposed to be gifts from U.S. to Yugoslavia.

Since both of the orders involved an email address of a Beograd ISP, I mailed the ISP, politely asking if their entire client base were crooks or is internet fraud their national pastime? (always the diplomat me).

I got a very nice reply, asking a couple more questions, and saying that they would report the matter to the local police, but as internet fraud is not a crime in their country, not to expect too much in the way of results.

In response to my question re crooks, their exact response was as follows :

'Concerning "national pastime", well, they are good hackers, with nothing to do (unemployment is 60%), and they feel stealing from NATO countries is a patriotic duty after last year's bombing.'

So there you have it....it's a 'Patriotic Duty' to defraud businesses in NATO countries !!.

We've now taken a management decision to sell nothing to anyone with a delivery or invoice address in any of the Balkan countries, plus we don't sell to anyone whos name ends in 'IC'...that should cure 95% of our attempted credit card fraud.

Ross