Ritz London targeted by scammers

Ritz Hotel in London have been targeted by scammers posing as hotel staff to steal payment card details.

The scammers were extremely convincing when they phoned  with accurate details of their restaurant bookings, asking  them to confirm card details . Thye then tried to spend thousands of pounds at the catalogue retailer Argos.

According to Ritz, it was investigating a potential data breach and said it had alerted the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

The fraudsters phone people who had already made a restaurant reservation at the London Ritz pretending to be hotel staff. One woman, who had made an online booking for the afternoon tea  at the Ritz as paet of a celebration, received a call the day before her reservation. The scaers asked her to confirm the booking by providing her payment card details.  The scammers  knew exactly when amd where her reservation was. One cyber security expert claims that called ID spoofing  is one way this is quite easy.

The scammers even knew her payment card had been declined  and asked her for a second  card.

 After they had taken the payment card details the scammers tried to make several transactions in excess of 21, 000 at the catalogue retailer Argos. When her bank spotted the suspicious transactions, the scammer phone again, this time pretending to be from her bank.

The scammers told the victim that somebody was trying to use her credit card and in order to cancel the transaction she should read out a security code sent to her mobile phone which in reality would have authorised the transaction.

The Ritz said it had been made aware of a potential data breach within its food and beverage reservation system on 12 August.