"The safe, fast way to send and receive money worldwide," declares the website of MoneyGram. This was soothing news for Tina Stallard and her husband, who were planning to buy a second-hand car advertised on the internet. The vendor agreed to travel to London from Italy provided Stallard could demonstrate that she had the necessary funds. "She suggested that I transfer £5,000 to my husband by MoneyGram which would mean that it was ready to be collected from a post office if we liked the car," says Stallard. "As MoneyGram assured me that the money would only be released to someone with the transaction code and ID in my husband's name, it seemed risk-free." Stallard emailed the vendor the MoneyGram receipt with half the code obscured, but the woman managed to decipher the missing digits and used false documents to collect the money. Stallard feels that MoneyGram could have done more to help her.

Mortgage brokers will be targeted in a crackdown on mortgage fraud, the City regulator announced today.

Email scams in which fraudsters try to trick people into revealing their bank account details have soared by 180% in the past year, figures showed today.

The Financial Services Authority believes traders who were trying to undermine a handful of fundraisings by major companies, notably HBOS, were deterred by its emergency rules on short selling.

The Office of Fair Trading has won a ground-breaking cross-border legal action against a Dutch-based mail order company that Guardian Money has repeatedly criticised for running highly misleading prize draws.

An elderly gentleman called Ernie - he didn't want to give his full name - rang me last week. Did I think that a 5% charge for wiring money abroad was too high?

Eight people suspected of being involved in an insider dealing ring have been arrested in dawn raids in London and the south-east of England.

When I was growing up in the south Indian city of Madras, there were only two political parties that mattered; one was run by a former matinee idol, and the other was run by his former screenwriter. My mother, giving me my first lesson in politics, explained that the difference between the two parties was that one party took large bribes and usually did the work that it was bribed for; while the other took equally large bribes – and did not do the work it was bribed for.

The founder of a landbanking company that Guardian Money first featured three years ago, and which has left a £70m trail of debt, has reopened for business in Dubai, selling plots of land in Kent it calls Canary City to unsuspecting investors.

A woman who claimed a voodoo curse had led to her bank accounts being hijacked was yesterday found guilty of a £1m benefit fraud.

During the trial Remi Fakorede, 46, produced three fingers, claimed they belonged to her daughter, and suggested the digits were proof that she had been forced to act in a fraudulent manner.

American authorities have uncovered a global computer hacking and credit card fraud ring spanning the US, eastern Europe and Asia, officials said.

A group of landbanking companies that sold sites where "there was no prospect of planning permission being obtained" has been would wound up in the public interest following an investigation by the Insolvency Service.