Are Mobile Phone Recyclers putting Charities at Risk and Fuelling Phone Crime?
Howard Lake | 9 November 2006 | News
An undercover investigation has revealed that some of the UK’s major mobile phone recyclers are putting their reputations and those of national charities and major retailers, at risk by handling and selling stolen goods.
Phone recycling is a popular way of raising money for charity, with donations given in return for old or unused mobile phones. Recipero, who carried out the investigation, sent handsets registered as stolen to the four biggest UK recycling companies via recycling schemes advocated in major retail outlets.
Within a very short period donations had been made to the nominated charities, some of which are the largest in the UK, with some of the phones being resold to consumers in the UK or abroad. Unwittingly, charities are receiving money from the sale of stolen goods and major high street stores are leaving themselves open to accusations of a lack of corporate responsibility.
“It is worrying that in the name of charity, stolen phones are being sold on to the unsuspecting customer,” says Adrian Portlock, Recipero’s Managing Director. “Recycling has become a very big and profitable business with companies re-selling second-hand handsets to UK and overseas consumers. However, they are failing to check the crime or blocked status of the phones they are handling and putting their own, as well as their retail and charity partners’ reputations at risk.”
With an estimated 15 million mobile phones being replaced every year in the UK alone, mobile recycling has become big business. As well as the positive environmental impact that recycling has, many handsets donated to recyclers result in donations to charities worth up to £3.50, making the schemes widely supported by all areas of the public and many large corporations.
The system works by supplying prepaid envelopes (for the handsets) in charity shops, supermarkets and by mobile phone retailers. The envelopes go directly to a recycling company. Once received, the recycler makes the donation to the designated charity. Some recyclers allow the public to send phones to them directly, make a small contribution to charity, pay a fee for the phone and then resell the phone at a profit.
The recycled mobile phones in question could quite possibly have been stolen from a serious crime scene and could represent important evidence. An innocent person in possession of such a phone could find himself or herself arrested if the IMEI number is checked, with the phone being traced back to the recycler, charity or corporate client.
Recipero has recently been in contact with the Charity Commission and asked it to ensure that its members are aware of these issues, and that any donations they receive from mobile phone recyclers have not been derived from unchecked phones. “We are calling on all organisations that work with phone recyclers to make sure that their recycling company is accredited by us and is checking all the phones correctly,” adds Portlock.
Recipero provides a unique stolen phone checking service called CheckMEND. Used either online or via text, CheckMEND is analogous to an HPI check on a second hand car, but for mobile phones.
Notes to editors:
For Further information, contact the Recipero media team
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Recipero
Recipero is the world leader in the aggregation of possession ownership and associated criminality. Operating on a global basis from its Gloucestershire base, its systems hold over 2 billion pieces of information about possession ownership and associated criminality. Through integration with major law enforcement organisations, insurance companies and trade bodies from over 32 countries Recipero is now able to provide a unique online stolen property checking service (CheckMEND) on a world wide basis.
The name Recipero is Latin, meaning ‘to be returned’, as the original focus of the company was to develop and build a world wide lost and found online database enabling recovered property to be returned by Law Enforcement and lost property offices such as Transport for London.
The company, its services and its systems have been adopted by the many Law Enforcement Organisations including the UK Police and HMCR, 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.
CheckMEND
CheckMEND is a stolen property identification system, an online service operated by Recipero Limited
CheckMEND is analogous to an HPI check on a second hand car, but for consumable items such as mobile phones, bicycles, laptops, digital cameras, iPods and satellite navigation systems.
Checks can be carried out to see if a product is stolen by entering an IMEI, serial or identification number. Within seconds, CheckMEND is able to tell the user if the item is reported stolen and, in the case of mobile phones, if the phone is barred or been reprogrammed.
The seller of an item can also carry out checks before they offer an item for sale, they can then sell the item with a CheckMEND certificate, which can be viewed, online for free by any prospective purchaser. This is ideal for sellers on auction websites as well as the second hand trade and auction houses.
CheckMEND is linked to the databases of Law Enforcement, the mobile phone industry and major insurers. From information supplied by these sources, CheckMEND has compiled a ‘hotlist’ of over 16 million reported stolen items that is increasing every day. CheckMEND is the only comprehensive system of its kind, The public, second hand trade, auction houses, repairers and recyclers can check items against the hotlist to see if they have been reported as stolen before making a transaction.
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.