Bank cards, reminders and collection letters: residents of one street in Hooghalen have been receiving mail for a year that is not intended for them. ING Bank suspects fraud and has now reported it to the police. What’s behind this?
Anyone who drives through Oosthalen by car will see a typical Drenthe countryside road. You drive past detached houses that are some distance apart, a campsite, a few farms and stretches of agricultural land. Every now and then a cyclist passes by. You will not notice that fraudsters are active here.
But around this time last year, there was some consternation in the neighborhood WhatsApp group. Residents of five addresses received dozens of letters at home from ING, containing bank cards, credit cards and associated PIN codes. These were addressed to unknown names.
Dairy farmer Derk Talens then received 22 letters at his address. “We wouldn’t know what to do with them. And why they end up with us,” he said at the time.
“I find this very strange. Who is behind this?” said Karin Schaap from camping Tikvah. “There are criminals going on for the same money. And then they have debts and bailiffs come to my address, while I have nothing to do with it.”
And she wasn’t that far wrong. Although no bailiff has come by yet, Talens has received a letter from a collection agency four times in recent weeks. With the request to pay outstanding debts quickly.
In the meantime, some of the local residents kept a close eye on the street. Because maybe someone would come and empty the mailboxes and then use the bank cards.
“We thought about that too at first phishing“, says criminologist Susanne van ‘t Hoff-de Goede, who works at the expertise center for cybersecurity at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. “We are familiar with examples in which criminals report changes of address and then intercept the mail. And then it seems as if things simply went wrong here.”
But so far it does not appear that any letters have actually been collected in Hooghalen. And the bank accounts have not been opened in the names of the residents themselves. So what is going on?
At ING Bank they suspect that it is a form of fraud with money mules. Fraudsters then become an online customer of ING and open an account. “They use a passport of a real person. You must also provide a selfie with the application,” says spokesperson Alexandra Schippers.
For example, the criminals then take out loans and put the money in those accounts or use credit card credit. They use the money mules’ accounts to channel or launder the money.