Two arrested in web fraud case

Third wanted for questioning over Zavvi Direct website scam

Dinah Greek, Computeract!ve 20 Nov 2008

Two men have been arrested in connection with the Zavvi Direct website scam that tricked thousands of UK shoppers earlier this year, and a third man is wanted for questioning.

Sussex Police said it had arrested two men from Kent on suspicion of money laundering offences. Both have now been released on bail pending further enquiries. A third man is wanted for questioning over £70,000 he allegedly received from the Zavvi Direct company bank account.

Although the Zavvi Direct scam was only running for nine days in June this year, more than 2,500 people were conned into thinking it was a genuine site run by the high-street retailer Zavvi, formerly Virgin Megastores. The Zavvi Direct website was designed using the same green and black colour scheme as the genuine Zavvi online shop.

Shoppers were attracted to the site as it claimed to have stock of Nintendo’s Wii Fit video game. At the time this game was in such short supply that even huge retailers such as the real Zavvi could not get enough stock, and many websites were advertising shops where the game could be found.

The rogue website was linked to a company registered at Companies House. Solicitors acting for the man listed as its director issued a statement saying that his “details have been fraudulently given to Companies House … our client has been the victim of identity theft and fraud.”

Zavvi Direct also rented office space in Brighton to add create the illusion of a legitimate business. Some customers calling the store had their calls answered, although the numbers given were prepay mobile phones. It took payments using the legitimate online payments service Protx.

Protx was alerted to a possible problem after receiving several customer complaints and communicated its concerns to the bank handling Zavvi Direct’s account. This meant that although the site continued to take payments, all new funds were frozen in a holding account while the bank investigated. Nonetheless, the criminals still managed to get away with at least £120,000 in the first few days of the website being operational.

During our investigation we linked Zavvi Direct to another rogue website, Best Sports World, which was investigated by Kent police in 2007. The men registered as directors of this company also claimed that they had been the victims of identity theft.

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