Mobile phone recyclers refute 'stolen goods' claim
Howard Lake | 17 November 2006 | News
Mobile phone recyclers in the UK who raise money for numerous charities have hit back at claims that they are putting charities at risk and fuelling phone crime.
An undercover investigation by Recipero – which runs an online stolen property identification system called CheckMEND – claimed that some of the UK’s major mobile phone recycles were putting the reputations at risk, along with those of national charities and major retailers, by handling and selling stolen handsets.
The company sent handsets registered as stolen to the four biggest UK recycling companies via recycling schemes publicised in major retail outlets. Donations for these phones were made to the nominated charities, which Recipero said meant charities were receiving money from the sale of stolen goods and high street stores left themselves open to accusations of a lack of corporate responsibility.
Phone recycler Redeem said it had raised more than £2.2m through recycling hundreds of thousands of handsets and printer cartridges and had not received one complaint about incidences of stolen goods.
A spokesman for the company said it commended Recipero’s CheckMEND service, and supported its use for online functions and situations where individuals stand to gain from the sale of stolen mobiles but said: At present it is not a practical solution for the processing of high volumes of handsets. The time, labour and monetary costs involved would undoubtedly impact on the funds generated for charities through recycling.
Eazyfone Group, another handset recycler, said it uses stringent control mechanisms in its sorting departments to identify potentially stolen handsets. When these are identified, they are handed to the police with the name and contact details of the person or business who sent it in for recycling.
Recipero has been in contact with the Charity Commission and asked it to make sure that registered charities are aware of potential criminal activity and that any donations received from mobile phone recyclers have not been made from unchecked phones.
The company says its services and systems have been adopted by law enforcement organisations including UK police and HMRC, insurers and the mobile phone industry as an integral part of the detection of property ownership, insurance and VAT fraud, false reporting and associated criminality.
www.checkmend.com/uk/
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.