Warning: Fraudulent Hilton offers by syndicate mass advertising in SA.

As you may know this newsletter goes out to all the major hotels and airline Ceo’s, VP’s, regional managers and all the hotels managers in establishments I have visited as well as the readership, new and old.

If you hooked up on social media in South Africa you might have seen these ads going about.

Seems the above ad postings are from primary sellers of pyjamas to food to timeshare to abayas to travel agents and everything else in between.

There seems to be a growing number of individual ads and changes with primarily the same offers at the exact same prices.

Questions I’ve been asked:

So how are these characters (who have no experience nor posts on loyalty prior) obtaining these fraudulent offers?

Hello Ebay and Darknet from $18.

Ebay has been synonymous with many types of illicit activity since its inception.

Seems hackers on Darknet continue to have these Ebay postings changing their cities of offer time to time but most of their Chinese IP’s remain the same… Read their descriptions in somewhat broken english. Its not new, Ebay offers have come and gone in the past as I will also highlight below.

Its not uncommon to find 85000 (stolen) Honors points for a whopping R30. I’ve also seen offers for a million (stolen) points or miles that go for $100. Unfortunately fraud is rife everywhere, ever had your secure credit card compromised that will leave you head scratching? Chances are your card number was sold on Darknet/web.

You welcome to log on Ebay and manually search the above. I cannot add a link.

 

Speaking to Hilton head office in McLean last week, regarding this unique offer I’ll highlight:

R4500 Hilton Gold – no stay requirements..

.. is an exclusive American Express Platinum charge card promo ( not Platinum card), the card carries a hefty R5000 + fee per annum and/or $495 in other markets ontop of meeting their strict asset owner criteria and huge monthly salary requirements, basically targeted at high nett worth individuals.

Anyone taken the above offer off the characters or direct on Ebay and for interest sake would like to know where your last digested stolen breakfast came from that you may have fed your family including kids with and from what type Amex Platinum charge card market?  I can guarantee you its not a 37709 market ( this the first 5-6 digits of a credit card stipulates the cards country of origin and type, in this case the digits above  represents, Amex Platinum Charge, South Africa). So it seems hackers obtain the stolen card details, sell the card number and same time spin off goes on offer on Ebay derived from this.

What happens to these type of accounts?

It seems they ultimately do get locked with points frozen and name gets blacklisted from future participation, this is in their terms and conditions of all fraud.  Hilton also seems to take their time after waiting for culprits to spend money on pre-paid accommodation or buy points as there is no recourse to any refund once accounts are locked and blocked.

Suspected culprits from these fraudulent Ebay linked accounts can also look forward to providing a statement to the security authorities upon check-in or during their stay if the hotel management gets a interdiction from the head office, this statement gets added to the individual case files with a Fraud Analyst of HHFP – Diagnosis and Response Team (DART).

Here are some requests I have received over time, its usually the same story from above:

NB: All my responses are in the green, the queries from others are in the white.

Looking into another travel blog who had a post during previous fraud escapades:

see the comments below to these articles:

Do you know any of these characters?

Personally no, but the bulk have a history of querying and questioning as I can highlight below, notice the mobile numbers vs the ads.

Simply put, in all of the past 10 years of attending conferences on smart card ID’s, printed cards, Frequent Flyer University, travel forums, conferences on card security, workshops on loyalty programmes in the States and Europe I’ve yet to meet another South African or another African national attending.

 

I’ve hinted on Instgram as well as my newsletter the below :

and guess who always messages worriedly:

ever asked the above on “whats a stay?”  see the exact word for word paste given from myself dated below:

 

What offers comes next:

Well for starters, 2018, being implemented are Diamond with no stays and Diamond until 2020 (maybe 2021) but you wont find any of that on Ebay nor listed with the characters above..