Police smash Home Counties fraud ring

Bedfordshire police have cracked a fraud ring which swindled dealers in the Home Counties out of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Ten arrests were made and one man was charged with attempted deception.

The group used US credit card numbers sourced from the Internet to order PCs and hardware from small dealers in Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. The gang fraudulently obtained about u200,000 of goods in the first two weeks of August.

Operation Genesis has since recovered about u73,000 of hardware and peripherals.

Investigations into the extent of the fraud will continue over the next two to three weeks.

A Bedfordshire police representative said the gang was well organised: 'These people knew all about the products they were ordering and sounded authentic. The gang made sure they only approached small firms who don't have the facilities or staff to check every order thoroughly.'

The police have advised businesses to treat with caution orders where mobile phone numbers are supplied as contacts and residential addresses as delivery points. Credit card numbers beginning with 4417 and 4678 were among those used by the gang.