Andrew Bolt: Why credit card crooks now know Victoria is the place to be

A scammer who was ordered to do community service and wasn’t deported after racking up debt on scores of stolen credit cards has revealed to every other crook that Victoria is the place to be.

And a Merry Christmas to Peter Hamilton, because that’s about the only thanks he’ll get. It’s not this detective Senior Constable’s fault that every credit card scammer – especially in New Zealand – should now know Victoria is the place to be.

Early this year a thief got my wife’s credit card details and bought him and his girlfriend everything from flowers and interstate holidays to medicinal cannabis. (Yes, we now check our bank records daily.)

This crook, New Zealander Jovahn Hayse-Mark Richards Gibson, could easily have got away with it, too, because Hamilton told me something amazing – even before the latest twist. Richards Gibson had also bought 36 stolen credit card details from a Russian website for about $34 each, yet no other victims reported his rip-offs to police.

Sure, the victims blocked their cards when they found out, but who wants to spend another half a day making a statement to the police when the banks refund you, anyway? That alone makes credit card fraud one of the safest crimes for a crook.

But worse is that none of the banks told the police, either.
Or not that Hamilton knows.

Mornington Peninsula Investigation Unit detective Senior Constable Peter Hamilton. Picture: Lucy Callander

In fact, banks were reluctant to give Hamilton data on the thief’s illegal purchases – time, IP addresses and so on – to help identity him. Privacy, they said.

Nor do banks seems to think it’s worth their own time investigating. Not for a few thousand here or there. Especially not when they can just tell poor retailers conned by such scum to take the loss.

Richards Gibson, though, had bad luck. It wasn’t just that Hamilton was keen to catch him, but that other police happened to find him passed out in his car, with 30g of cocaine, thousands of dollars in cash and a mobile phone that told tales.

Now you’d think someone like Richards Gibson, with all his thievery and drug use, would be in for a legal hiding, especially after writing rap songs boasting of his crimes. But I gave you a spoiler alert: “Victoria”.

Yes, Richards Gibson was ordered to do 100 hours of unpaid community work and seek treatment, but no conviction was recorded against him.

Why? Because a conviction might mean he couldn’t keep living in Australia. We wouldn’t want to deport this nice man, would we?

Signal sent: every credit card thief, especially in New Zealand, should come to Victoria.

But Merry Christmas, Sen Constable Hamilton. At least you tried.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Why credit card crooks now know Victoria is the place to be