The study examines how willing fraudsters confront the ‘barriers to entry’caused by financing, obtaining credit and other cards, using them, re‐selling goods and avoiding arrest. This analysis then is used to explain how such frauds can be committed by, at one extreme, lone thief/merchant fraudsters to, at the other extreme, international counterfeiting and distribution syndicates. On the basis of interviews with fraudsters and with card fraud investigators, the study reviews how fraudsters learn their business, how the organisation of fraud prevention affects both their techniques and their organisation, and how fraudsters connect up to stolen property markets. Finally, it examines the likely impact of technological developments upon the extent and organisation of plastic fraud, concluding that the Internet will lead to faster fraud transmission but that there will be some inhibiting effect on the non‐computerate and on those who are not able or willing to travel overseas to defraud.