Kathryn McKay and Kenneth Newman fraud

Kathryn McKay. Kenneth Newman. (more info below)
email address - missholand@****
phone number - *****6816
IP address - ***.***.204.49

Studying Geography/Business in London area.

Bought essay titled "The economical impact of the redevelopment of Paddington Basin on the local and business establishment that surrounds it. "

Watch out, these names are associated with a fraudster who uses them. But the names could be fake (made up by real fraudsters who stole the personal names / identity of random people).

what happened with her matt, didnt she pay or something????

She had the essay then, after recieving it, she waited 2 months before having a chargeback put on her card. PayPal agreed and took £840 from our PayPal account and basically gave it her back. Great!

Matt,

What company you write for?

I work for powerfulwords.co.uk and oxbridgewriters.com. I uploaded a fraud page today on Powerful Words so, fingers crossed, this fraudster will get caught by her university.

I would like to read her side of the story. I think it's very unprofessional to do what you did.

Well, I emailed her three times, phoned around four times leaving messages asking her if it was a mistake and trying to discover what was happening. She never responded though seemed to be able to recieve messages fine from PayPal when they tried to contact her. We take CARD FRAUD (which this is) very seriously. I told her exactly what was going to happen and she ignored me completely. I'll give you her side of the story now if you wish. She orders an essay for £840, recieves it and is very happy, waits two months, charges the payment back to her card, has the essay and the money back, has name put on web to expose what has happened.

Matt.

Matt,

The client's personal information (name, hone number etc) are all protected under the UK Data Protection Act regardless of whether you think she scammed you.

If she makes a complaint to the Information Commissioner you will lose a lot more than the £840 you've already lost on the essay. She can also claim compensation through the courts from you and from Powerful Words Limited for data protection breaches.

If you want to devalue the essay then by all means post it all over the internet. It's not good business sense though to expose yourself and the company you write for to investigation by the Information Commissioner and possible prosecution / litigation.

There is also another side to this in that prospective clients will see that Paypal backed your client in this dispute and initiated the chargeback; it's unlikely that they did this without her making a strong claim against you / your company. I suspect that seeking to expose / humiliate your client in this way will hurt you and your company far more than it hurts her.

Exactly. Who wants to hire a vengeful service?

Doesn't matter. Too late now.

This will be my final post in response to 'WritersBeware' inane questions. It has nothing to with being vengeful, what the client did was ILLEGAL and she was given plenty of opportunity to respond to the emails she was sent by the company. In response to Torchwood, I don't think she scammed us, I know she did. PayPal didn't 'back' her claim, her card company proved she 'wasn't present' when she paid, as it was a phone payment that is glaringly obvious.

I am not trying to humiliate her, if she had taken £840 from you I doubt you'd be sitting back thinking "tut-tut, I hope this doesn't hurt me in any way." Also, as she is refusing to answer any calls or respond to any emails I'd assume she has done this before and changes email addresses and phone numbers on regular occasions. The essay has been uploaded on our Powerful Words website so, hopefully, her university will discover it.

As for breaching the data protection act, well, she has a limited right under the Data Protection Act to tell an individual or organisation to stop processing information about her if it is causing her unwarranted and substantial damage or distress. She should make this clear and it must be done in writing. I'll put her response on this forum should get a letter to me.

Matt.

If what she did was illegal then file a police report and pursue her through the small claims court. Breaching her privacy in this way puts you firmly in the wrong.

It is not necessary for this person to make a complaint about your behaviour to the Information Commissioner, anyone (even if they are not directly affected) can make a complaint if they know that a company is breaching the data protection act.

I don't accept that she got a chargeback simply on the basis that the cardholder was not present; if this was the case, every mail order or internet company would be awash with such claims and quickly put out of business. She may have disputed making the transaction or authorising the transaction but that is a different matter altogether.

I'm sorry that you have lost money on this but your behaviour in these posts demonstrates your lack of business acumen. Perhaps this is an opportunity for you to wise-up and check out your clients more thoroughly before accepting orders. Many of the established UK essay companies won't accept orders that cannot be verified with a residential address and landline and many use companies such as Experian to check their clients identity before accepting orders.

Are we still on about this matter! Her details are on-line, the essay is available for universities to see and expel her for plagiarism, the Police won't investigate as they haven't the recourses to help (I have spoken to them) and we're currently in the process of changing to a decent system to accept payments as PayPal is clearly not secure. You can accept what you want as you don't know the full story and, if she wants to make a complaint, she is more than welcome. We'll see if she comes forward shall we? I doubt very much that a fraudster is going to try and play the 'breaching privacy' card. Maybe if more companies exposed fraudulent clients and those breaking the law there would be a lot less of this behaviour. I'm quite surprised that someone who writes so vigilantly on this website is championing the case of a criminal. I'll leave you to trawl the site looking for posts to add your views. As I have more important things to do than argue the toss with you I'll end this topic here. Oh, before I go, thanks to Dylan for getting in contact with me, what you said was very helpful.

Well, you should accept that because it's true. The laws are against Internet merchants; if the card is not present, the client may make up any excuse to do a chargeback.

I personally agree with "Matt" and I'm sure essay writing companies would not like to deal with such clients. If you were a car dealer and someone told you that your prospective client is a bank robber, would you still sell him the car? I wouldn't. I see she used an anonymous email address (not even her first/last name in the email) so I don't see how it could be revealing her personal information.

Major, the data protection act is very strict in the UK and is weighted towards the protection of personal information. If Matt had simply posted the essay or the email address then he'd be okay but he didn't - he was stupid and posted her full name and she can be identified by this.

I agree with Matt that it is doubtful that she will file a complaint. I might on the other hand as his antics annoy me.

Some information is public and accessible by all. For example, company information is public. So I can post that the Director of Powerful Words Limited is Edward Longhurst of 6 Ashbourne Close, Dawley, Shropshire TF4 2QR and the company secretary is Matthew Pledger of Flat 32, Meadow Drive, Shifnal, Shropshire TF11 9AD. This information is part of the company's public registration information, together with these people's dates of birth and the company director's own anonymous e-mail address (milkytip1981 yahoo .co.uk).

I'm sure essay companies don't like dealing with fraudsters - even though they themselves are enabling academic fraud - but that doesn't give them the freedom to break the law to get back at them. There are legitimate channels available.

If Matt's company had been a registered company for more than six months they may have sussed out before now that the essay business is prone to fraud and it is important to be vigilant before accepting the order. I'm sure this has been a salutary lesson for him.

The problem is the merchant protection act doesn't exist or is too weak, so the merchant should have the right to find their own ways to deal with fraudulent clients.

I'm glad my message helped. Are you the same Matt Pledger who went to Thames Valley Uni?

Legal ways, Major.


It would be interesting to know if any of the multitude of 'Oxbridge' essay companies that have sprung up are run by anyone with a direct connection with either Oxford or Cambridge. I've not come across one yet!

What "legal" ways would you propose? Hopefully not spending £1000 in legal or collection fees to get £840 back..

In the UK we have the small claims court in which you can make a claim for up to £100k (almost $200k at today's exchange rates). The cost of making a claim for £840 would be £80 and you can add this cost to your claim. The claim system is very straightforward and the claim can be filed online with no expert knowledge, but if you do engage legal assistance you can also add this cost to your claim together with any other costs associated with making the claim. If you win your claim you can ask the court to enforce the judgment.

IF you win, you can still wait years for your money (most likely you would have to hire collection agency anyway).

I made a claim in the small claims court last year - from making the claim online to receiving payment took 11 weeks.

Admittedly there will always be people who will dodge payment, but at least if you pursue a claim lawfully then both you and your customers will know that you operate your business in a reputable manner. When a company loses its reputation it doesn't have a lot left.

Outing people on the internet may make perfect sense to Matt. Others, like me, would avoid any company that resorted to breaching legislation or underhand tactics to get their own back on a client no matter how justified the company felt.

My own feeling is that much of Matt's anger and frustration is actually about the company's own failures to do sufficient due diligence on this customer.

In a high fraud industry, would you accept a high value order (£840/$1600) from a customer without carefully checking that the customer had a stable address - easily checkable in the UK from electoral records - and a landline telephone (rather than disposable cell phone) at the very least?

I know of one UK essay company that will only take orders from UK, US and Canadian residents and that insists on copies of a customer's driver's license, utility bills, as well as a checkable address and landline before they will even consider taking on the order.

Vigilance pays.

So from one hand you oppose the "personal information" to be revealed to the public; on the other you encourage the companies to take all steps possible to check on the prospective client? Well, in that case I think searching for a person's name online is one of such steps. If I find out the person did an unauthorized chargeback, I don't deal with her. Thank's to Matt's post.

I think Torchwood is saying that companies should be upfront and say what information they need to confirm the identity and permanent address of the client before accepting the order. The client then has the choice whether to provide that information or to use another essay company. Personally, I'd find it too much hassle to deal with a company who needed me to provide copies of all my ID; I would prefer that they just credit checked me through my name and address and called me on my home phone as confirmation.

Major, I don't understand what you mean by an "unauthorized chargeback"? Surely the chargeback was authorized by the credit card company? I didn't think that essay companies got the choice whether to authorize a chargeback. I was under the impression that a chargeback was imposed on the essay company by the card company unless the disputed transaction was resolved by other means.

I think we should remember in this thread that we only have one side of the story. It is possible that the customer in this case had a legitimate reason for disputing the transaction.

You are an angry person, and you just don't get it.

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet. Good luck attracting customers with revenge as your promo.

I oppose UK registered companies revealing personal information when they are acting in breach of the UK data protection act. I don't believe that individuals or organizations should get to decide which legislation they will comply with and which they won't. That is anarchy.

As I understand it, the client has never complained about the service. Yet she did a chargeback.

If a "normal" customer has a problem with a product or service she first should contact the company to possibly resolve the problem, shouldn't she? Her not contacting the company proves her ill intentions.

I don't think that there is any proof of anything in this debate. Just opinions based on partial information.

We've been told that the chargeback was authorized because the cardholder was not present. In the UK, the banks have been reported in the press as saying that the majority of 'cardholder not present' frauds are due to the theft of information (discarded receipts, intercepted mail etc). We are also told that this person was using a mobile phone and a free-mail address. To me, this sounds more like a case of identity theft than someone using their own credit card and scamming an essay company. I could be wrong though.

If the person whose credit card was used did not order the paper and did not authorize someone else to use their card then they have every right to dispute the transaction and are under no obligation to get involved in discussions with the company concerned.

I have some sympathies with the company as they are out of pocket, but I don't think that they are handling themselves very well - although this is understandable if they are new in the market and this is the first time they've been hit. It's a shame because if it is the same Matt Pledger that went to Thames Valley Uni then he's an okay guy. I just think he's ill-advised to take this tack, but I doubt that he cares what I think.

When you buy something online, it is not possible to "have the cardholder present," isn't it. In 2006 news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6075419.html - people spent $211 billion online. Does it mean the transactions for, let's say $100 billion [the majority], were due to the theft of information?

I've no idea what proportion of the total transactions online globally was legitimate and what proportion was fraudulent due to identity theft.

You said:


My point is that there is no proof here. We don't know if the cardholder did scam this company or whether the cardholder was herself scammed.

I was referring to this:

the banks have been reported in the press as saying that the majority of 'cardholder not present' frauds are due to the theft of information

Since ALL online transactions are classified as 'cardholder not present' it suggest that transactions for over $100 billion could be fraudulent.

I guess, maybe Matt could specify what was the exact reason of the chargeback.

It might have suggested that if I'd said "cardholder not present transactions" but I didn't. I said "cardholder not present frauds" which is not the same thing at all.

Kenneth Newman scam

Kenneth Newman .
email address - kenneth_law@*****
phone number - 07891******
IP address - ***.***.104.176

Studying Law/Human Rights in California.

Essay titled, "How, and with what success, has the U.S. legal system managed the trade-off between the values of supporting creative pursuits through copyright protection and promoting innovation in new communication technologies, in specific relation to the problems raised by file-sharing on the Internet by companies such as Napster Ltd., Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Ltd.?"

What about him?

It's placed in the fraudulent students section - this individual had a £750 chargeback put on his card from our PayPal account.

Did he have a reason to do that? That's a lot of money..

Maybe this forum needs a section warning customers about particular Web sites that will post their personal information online in the event that there is a disgreement about quality of service.

But I guess there may be some cases the quality is excellent, but the client still refuses to pay and prefers to get the service for free...

Yes, but that comes with the territory. If you run a business, you will take losses. Don't be unprofessional and ruin the reputation of an entire industry.