Cathay Pacific Asia Miles - Asia Miles Scam....

Just caught the end of this story on the local news today (TVB)...so didn't get much of the story.

However, there was something mentioned about HKG airport or CX staff stealing miles from customer accounts or something to that effect. People have been arrested and others are on the run!

Did anyone see that report or can give complete details?

Thanks.

There was something similar in Australia about a QF staff doing that sort of thing too.

they weren't stealing miles from customer accounts... they stole from CX... they basically set up a lot of new asiamile accounts, and when the people checked in without using a FFP, they entered in those accounts. When the amassed a ton of miles, they used it to redeem flights for themselves and sold to their friends and family at a very low cost..

9 months jail for the 2 people involved...

I heard from mingpao that they've credited passanger's mileage using fake accounts. I suppose those pax were the ones without an account anyway, so they couldnt really steal it from us i think?

Doesn't the name of the passenger (on the ticket/BP) need to match with the name on the asia miles account in order for miles to be credited?

Am i missing something?

The reason why i ask is that i have had two occassions when after flying CX i have asked for a retro crdit on those flights only to be told by CX that they have been credited already - however they never showed up on my account. This happened about a year ago and since have never used AsiaMiles/CX.

Maybe this is why asiamiles has been so anally retentive about the member name matching the manifest recently. The news report said that the scammers also sold the awards tickets. I don't know how they could have done that as the fake names on the account would have had to match the person they were selling the tix to.

Doesn't the name of the passenger (on the ticket/BP) need to match with the name on the asia miles account in order for miles to be credited?

Am i missing something?

The reason why i ask is that i have had two occassions when after flying CX i have asked for a retro crdit on those flights only to be told by CX that they have been credited already - however they never showed up on my account. This happened about a year ago and since have never used AsiaMiles/CX.

This happened in 2002 between April and October.. so unlikely you were affected by it. If I remember correctly, the matching asiamiles name with ticket name was only implemented about one or two year ago.. maybe it was a result of this...

Maybe this is why asiamiles has been so anally retentive about the member name matching the manifest recently. The news report said that the scammers also sold the awards tickets. I don't know how they could have done that as the fake names on the account would have had to match the person they were selling the tix to.

Maybe that name matching manifest thing is because of APIS-related demands. The US government, for one, retains the right to fine an airline something like $5000 for improper or incomplete information sent over.

IIRC this also happened at LHR a couple of years ago. The most shocking thing is that there are people flying and not collecting miles in the first place. :eek:

IIRC this also happened at LHR a couple of years ago. The most shocking thing is that there are people flying and not collecting miles in the first place. :eek:

There must be a double-digit percentage of passengers who don't collect miles on some of the flights I fly.

This is very interesting. I want to read more about this. How the airlines find out that staff stole miles from passengers? How can we prevent that ?
One tome my friend just enrolled in a new FFP and found out later that his flights were already registered to another account.

What always amazes me is my friends who fly transpacific and forget to sign up. 14 flights to and from Japan since 2002 is a hell of a lot of miles to just give away.
-UFFA