Identity theft and credit card fraud are so damn common these days that it's tempting to treat it like a bureaucratic hiccup dealt with by phone calls and form filling rather than associate it with actual criminals taking your money and disrupting your life. However, the scale of the global criminal network beavering away on diddling you of your earnings and credit ratings in this tech savvy, hands-off style is evident in the scuppering......

Following the furore over widespread lackadaisical record-keeping for on duty expenses within the Met police force, a detective has been jailed for 10 months for impressively audacious abuses of the company credit card. Detective Sergeant Richard de Cadenet's level of spending suggests he wasn't entirely thinking straight or even criminally when he laid out for Mexican holidays, luxury electrical goods, a snazzy new wardrobe and £18,000 of hard cash from the hole in the......

You were warned the Olympian scammers were starting early. Seems it's not only ticket tykes and touts that are getting ahead of the Games, though. One East London fraudster appears to have lured 550 Slovakian workers to London on the promise of jobs on the Olympic site and accommodation aboard 3 cruise ships at George V Dock, Stratford. Nigel Lewis protests his innocence, in the face of BBC London's report, claiming personal heartache that......

Buy and sell any tickets. Any tickets to spare? Buy and sell any tickets. If you hear these phrases being muttered on the tube and at bus stops over the next few months, don't be alarmed – it's just the nation's ticket touts and scammers warming up early for the 2012 Olympics. American lawyer Jim Moriarty (cool name, huh?) has warned that the biggest ticket frauds of Beijing 2012 are already being targeted at early......

Case records just released show how a woman accused of fraud tried a novel but gruesome way to persuade a North-East London jury that she was not to blame. Rather than use one of the more effective controversial defense strategies seen in recent cases such as the 'Twinkie Defense' ("I had to kill him, I'd eaten too much sugar and went all hyper and don't remember anything"), the accused had to find a different......

Those people persevering with wordy email scams from Nigeria, involving "confidential business transactions" worth vast amounts of money, civil unrest and promises of mighty rewards for the simple act of paying their expenses really ought to take a leaf out of the audacious book of the fake Contessa de Aliva, one crafty Elda Beguinua of Dulwich. This charming lady defrauded major financial institutions and persuaded an entire retinue to wait on her before conning......

Tooting has just been bestowed with a rather dubious title -- the UK's worst place for ID fraud. It's not just a little more likely that your identity, credit and good name will be stolen from SW17, it's a whole five times more likely than the UK average. West Ewell, Wimbledon and Battersea are just behind Tooting when it comes to risk, and London as a whole is about twice as bad as the rest......

Macabre London: First, man denies murdering model but admits to necrophilia; then a headless corpse turns up in northwest London. We find ourselves suspiciously eyeing other commuters on our Tube ride home this evening. Corrupt London: We know that London is ranked first on all kinds of lovely lists. But we’d prefer to forgo the dubious distinction of being first in rates of debit and credit card fraud. Tonally challenged London: Londonist thinks it’s......

Cunning 65 year old, Jean Hutchison, has been jailed for masterminding a devilish fraud haul in excess of £2.4 million through a devious and extraordinarily well organised benefits scam. If that weren't enough, she did it in a secret HQ fashioned through the back of a wardrobe. While most of us scrabble around in the mothballs when we're wee, hoping to find a snowscape and Mr Tumnus, Ms Hutchison created her very own criminal......

Greyhound mannequin unveiled at Madame Tussauds. It can run exceptionally fast, especially when placed too close to the central heating. 19 of the 20 worst postcodes for identity fraud are in London. Or is it another town masquerading as London? Single travel fares to be frozen in new year...most commuters know how that feels. Naked rambler cleared. It wouldn't stand up in court. Image courtesy of DICKSDAILY via the Londonist flickr group.......

This morning, Grandmothers were saving lives. Now, just a few hours later, they're being found guilty of murder. The news is seeing more and more about the terrifying 'honour killings' that seem to be happening amongst families. Bachan Athwal from Hayes, even boasted to relatives that she had got a relative to strangle her daughter-in-law, Surjit Athwal, and throw her body into a river in Punjab. This was nine years ago. Despite the horror......

A look at the obscene pots of cash floating around town this week. Money in Sale of Witanhirst, London's second largest house: £32 million (estimated) Average London home: £313,000 Total in: £32,313,000 Money out Michael Barry steals from Bexley Council: £220,000 Ne'er-do-wells posing as Jose Mourinho commit benefit fraud: £60,000 Brian Haw is a drain on police resources: £111,000 Jack Lemley, chair of the Olympic Delivery Authority, nets £400,000 for quitting his job. Metronet......

Kids in Camden get graffiti lessons. Expect to see them in Random Graffiti soon. Chelsea manager victim of fraud. Metronet faces administration. Fortnightly recycling 'won't work in cities'. Shocking. Boris will fun for mayor. image from sarchi's flickr photostream.......

So ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Milan, deducted eight league points for their involvement in the Calciopoli scandal, provide Europe's club champions, sitting alongside the Italian nation's triumph at last summer's world cup. (Incidentally, anyone who still disbelieves Filippo Inzaghi that Milan practice free kicks such as the one they scored from should have a look at this.) Former Milan CEO Adriano Galliani, banned for five months for his part in Calciopoli, was prominent amongst......

No, this is not a Touch Up London entry involving a giant root vegetable or a cross-looking Stefan Edberg (whimper). The magnificent Swede in question is the rather stunning Götheborg, a full-scale replica of an 18th century merchant trading ship that this weekend popped to visit the capital and have a bit of a face-off with a modern-day warship. It's not entirely an accurate replica - the deck is 10cm higher as seamen are......

We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week. Torontoist Special Report: Rosie to Trump: "Fire 300 Bicyclists for Fraud!" On DCist: Students Go Wild for Slogans, Secrets and Sexual Harassment The action was thick......

The Met have moved fast on a burglary that took place last Thursday, arresting a man the following day. The speedy result could have something to do with the fact that the crime took place right under their noses and that they themselves were the victims: Burglars have stolen laptop computers containing the payroll details of half of the Metropolitan Police staff, Scotland Yard has said. There's a worry now that the staff whose......

The government's plans to bring in high tech ID cards may have to go back to the drawing board after a Guardian investigation showed that biometric data could be electronically attacked and cloned with a £174 microchip reader. We say may have to back to the drawing board because so far the only response to the investigation has been a shrug of the governmental shoulders. Opposition parties have been quick to point out the......

Seven men are currently in custody after a football-related pub brawl in at the Cutty Sark pub in Thamesmead over the weekend resulted in the death of a 52-year-old man. Diane Abbott and Mayor Ken have warned that London needs more black teachers in order to "to harness and develop the talents and skills of all the city’s diverse communities". If London's suburbs were apples, "many of them would be bruised and past their......

Maybe it's because everything's just so bloody expensive, but "London is the least confident region when it comes to meeting household bills and repayments on time", reports CreditExpert, the online credit monitoring service from Experian. We might worry about overstretching ourselves, but it's not all bad news apparently. "Because they are less optimistic about their credit situation than the rest of the nation, Londoners are more likely to take their financial situation seriously." What......

Crime pays, apparently. Well, ok, it pays better if you're savvy enough to nick money through 'white-collar' methods. Bloody bourgeoisie. Not content with stealing the full fruits of the blue-collar workers' industry, they wangle themselves a better deal if they happen to be nicked for it. Michael Snyder is not a name familiar to us but he's apparently the chairman of policy and resources for the City. Not sure what this involves but today......

A while ago we reported on the somewhat confusing situation concerning Ofwat's decision to make Thames Water 'agree' to spend money on fixing their leaks instead of fining them. Well today it it looks like they're going fine them as well. Industry regulator Ofwat said on Wednesday it was considering fining Thames Water for customer service shortcomings. The move relates to failures under a so-called guaranteed standards scheme (GSS) that have occurred since July......

This week: 16 Blocks, Metal: a Headbanger's Journey and Slither. Plus all the usual gossip and Trailer of the Week. In the last FFN we complained a lot about the fact that that there were no decent films on release. So what do we go and do today? We take one look at the best-reviewed film of the week and decide we're going to ignore it. Enron: The Smartest Guy in the Room is......

DCist helps us make more sense of the world this week. Posts like this concert review are the reason for Scott Stapp. DCist also enumerates the reasons for playing ultimate frisbee, Condi's tight buns, their love of a local convenience store, and their jealousy of a person in Seattle calling the city. LAist documented graf artist Banksy's most recent visit to LA in one two three posts. They also found the best possible use......

An interesting little story buried away in the pages of the icSouthlondon site would seem to suggest that the borough of Lambeth is about to go seriously broke. The story dates back to the 80s when a Government loan was taken by the Greater London Council. When the authority was wound up in 86, that debt was passed to something called the Inner London Education Authority which only lasted until the end of the......

Another festive story to warm your cockles... A postman who stole chequebooks used in a £20m nationwide fraud ring is facing a lengthy jail sentence. Dido Mayue-Belezika, 34, from Camden, was said to be behind the scam, over which 24 people were charged. This is what happens when you don't give the posty a well deserved Christmas tip. Londonist used to live near a sorting depot once and each morning we'd take the same......

Police are tonight reporting that 300 black African boys have gone missing from London schools and fear thousands more could disappear each year. The numbers were revealed after the 2001 murder inquiry into the African boy's torso found in the Thames. That body was thought to be the victim of a ritual killing (we mentioned another child almost killed after being accused of witchcraft only a few days ago). Police inquiries revealed that 300......

Only six weeks into 2005 and already we've got ourselves a real contender for 'story of the year'. The Richard Desmond/Mafia/Porn/Internet scam story really does have all the elements. Of course, this whole thing reared its head a good five years ago. But it's only now, with the court case of "mafia emissary" Richard Martino, that all the details are coming to light. And what details! This Richard 'Ricci' Martino is part of the......

Although there are still a few days before Sunday, Londonist could not resist informing our readers of what could be a potentially riotous event. This Sunday at 9:00 pm, the Curzon Soho (a Londonist favorite) will be showing She Hate Me, Spike Lee’s most recent movie. Now why is it you ask that we mention this? Because this is no ordinary screening, it is the first Curzon Boo-A-Long(and once you hear the storyline you will......

Right Guv, that'll be £16 and a Powerbook please It seems that Londoners have come out on top yet again. This time we are the best in the world at forgetting to take our expensive gadgets with us when we are getting out of taxis. According to The Register, in the last six months alone "63,135 mobile phones (an average of three phones per taxi), 5,838 PDAs and 4,973 laptops" have been left in......