He saw a free vacation, now he’s seeing jail bars: 4 money lessons from a corporate credit card scam
In a shocking turn of events, one British man has been jailed for misusing the company’s credit cards to sponsor his trips to Disney World and for buying expensive gadgets.
The accused is 32-year-old David Carr from Warwickshire, who worked in a Bromsgrove-based IT company. He has now been sent to jail for four years and seven months, reported BBC.
The total credit card fraud amounted to £3,00,000 and the company, as a result, has been sent to liquidation. It is a legal process (under the Insolvency Act 1986) that has the aim of achieving one of the statutory objectives of an administration. This may be to rescue a viable business that is insolvent due to cash flow problems.
These are a few money lessons one can learn to avoid misuse of a credit card.
4 money lessons to learn
I. Do not share: Needless to mention, never give your credit card to anyone, not even to a close friend. A small carelessness can lead to a big financial mistake.
II. Add-on card: In case you want to share your credit card with someone in the family, such as your children, you can use an add-on card. An add-on card is an additional or supplementary card, a credit card issued to someone other than the primary cardholder, but linked to the primary card’s account.
III. Getting it blocked: If someone used your card and you learnt via a message, do not think twice before getting the card blocked. Remember that you can register a complaint with the bank if the transaction were not carried out by you.
IV. Set transaction limits: One smart tip is to set limits on the number of transactions one can carry out by using the credit card. For instance, if your card limit is ₹10 lakh, you can set a spending limit at, say, ₹1 lakh for a day if you are aware that you will never spend more than that in one transaction.
This way, any fraud – if you ever face– will be minimised. And you can immediately report it.
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