I got scammed!

I have been watching my business bank accout very closely, as a large wire transfer is on it's way. The second time I checked this morning I see that my account was hit for a charge from Livingston Air, an airline from Italy. 754.00. Bogus! Called Bank of America and finally got a human after ten minutes of button pushing and talking to computers. I will get my money back tomorrow, all will be OK, but I won't have a replacement card for a week. When I think about it, a lot of people have my card info, mostly suppliers. Somebody used that info to make this charge, but who? Probably will never find out, but the wondering bothers me. The flip side is that I could do the same thing, as I have card info on a lot of my customers. Bottom line is we all have to very careful with this information, and be very vigilant with our bank accounts. Anybody else have this happen?

Capital One sent one of those "pre approved" junk mails to an apt that I didn't live in anymore.

Someone filled it out and rang up $5000 on the card.

They tried to claim it was my fault because I didn't advise them of my new address.

I told them I don't have a capital one car, never will and I don't bother to forward junk mail to my new address.

Problem is all fixed now but they will never get any business of mine.

Shawn

A few years ago, I stopped at my parents house to check things out, as they had gone to Florida for the Winter (They're in their 70's and that's the law). The phone rang and I picked it up. It was a woman from the Home Shopping Network calling to ask if someone known as "Tymisha Myverywhitesoundinglastname" was authorized to make substantial purchases with my father Bob's credit card, and have it all shipped to New York City. I was fairly certain that the answer was "No".

An immediate call to the credit card company showed that the previous night, there were two other charges to the card. The first was for 75 cents worth of gas and the second was for about three bucks. Then an $800+ purchase from HSN.

My father had never lost his card, so I don't know if it was scanned or if someone grabbed a statement out of the mail. The credit card company straightened it all out without much trouble.

HSN gave me the bogus shipping address and I called the local police precinct, but they wouldn't take a complaint over the phone, only in person. I didn't feel like driving to that particular neighborhood in New York to fill out the forms, so the act went unpunished.

There are many potential places for your data to be stolen. Someone set up a WIFI sniffer outside of one retailer, for example, and just saved all the network traffic from inside the store, then picked out the credit card transactions. You hear all the time of so-many-million credit card numbers stolen. They sell these things online. Keeping a close eye on all your stuff is about all you can do for these things. Of course, all personal informtion should go in the shredder at home.

I think fraudulent charges happen to EVERYONE at some point. It seems like everyone I know has had this happen at least once (myself included). It is never a lost or stollen card either, just the data gets swiped out of the nether at some point.

Well I've been hit a couple of times. It seems the local police don't really give a crap, because you should be able to track some of this stuff and I've never heard anything from any invesitigatopn. The businesses that get scammed won't give me any info about the purchase, but its my account that's been hacked.

I cannot buy stuff from Newegg because that is one of the businessed where the person bought stuff with my account. Unless I pay for the stuff that was scammed. I want to know if the person had the security number off the back.

I once got scammed via a off shore gambling place.

First my credit card took off the charges, and then shockingly, the off shore, web casino credited my account. (which prompted my CC to remove their credit). It was pretty interesting to find out how nice the off shore Casino was.

E-

If you're hit with unauthorized cc charges, you should be able to dispute them. Then the card company is on the hook - well, sort of. They'll go after the retailer that took the order. The important thing is that the owner of the card isn't responsible. It's amazing how much harder the credit card companies work at spotting possible fraudulent charges because it hurts them. You're not getting scammed, the retailer is getting scammed.

That's why Flyin' Miata has some fairly rigid rules in place. People get pissed when we won't ship to a different address without some verification through the bank - but we almost never take fraudulent orders. I can only think of one that got through in the past 5 years, and we've closed that hole now. Our credit card processing company loves us.

Woody wrote: .....HSN gave me the bogus shipping address and I called the local police precinct, but they wouldn't take a complaint over the phone, only in person. I didn't feel like driving to that particular neighborhood in New York to fill out the forms, so the act went unpunished.

This of course is HUGE part of the problem. It is too easy to get away with, even when they KNOW who it is.

aircooled wrote:

Woody wrote: .....HSN gave me the bogus shipping address and I called the local police precinct, but they wouldn't take a complaint over the phone, only in person. I didn't feel like driving to that particular neighborhood in New York to fill out the forms, so the act went unpunished.

This of course is HUGE part of the problem. It is too easy to get away with, even when they KNOW who it is.

Yep, I agree 1000%. I was on the forefront of credit fraud that's so common now. Someone got my wife's social security # 10 years ago and used it to set up a bunch of bogus credit, using all the other person's real info except the SS#. Name, address, everything. I easily got all of the crap off her credit report but nobody in law enforcement cared to go after the scamming loser. Since then I've had the interesting experience of getting a credit card fraud dept call asking if I or someone with authority to use my card had made a gas purchase in Italy (nope), and just 2 weeks ago again got the fraud department call for new fraudulent activity on a card I never use anymore. If law enforcement treated it as seriously as petty drug crimes a lot of credit scamming would stop IMHO.

The whole identity theft thing could be shut down, but there's too much politics involved. Can't go after the illegal alien using your SS# because some congress critter wouldn't have their lawn mowed this week, or you would have to pay an extra penny/pound for pork. Because of that, they don't try to stop the rest of it. And like pigeon sez, they're too busy trying to arrest people for drugs to actually stop someone from thieving from you. It's been my experience that "Law Enforcement" is primarily charged with filling out forms for insurance companies. After that, it's strictly tax collecting. If you've ever been robbed, vandalized, etc., and reported it, you will know exactly what I am talking about. Unless you photo the bad guy doing it, locate them, call the popo and tell them where and when to pick them up (and when has to be outside of the half hour that those doughnuts just come out of the fryer), it ain't gonna happen.

People get their ID stolen, credit is run up, the creditors expect the people to pay. Tough. MAYBE if the creditors would pay a little better attention to who they are giving money to, we wouldn't be in the problem we are in right now.

It's like spam: The NSA could probably tell you to within 20 feet of where the computer that is controlling the zombie nets is. Sorry, don't care.

PCI compliance. Look into it.

Dave Ramsey says....(I know, we are all sick of hearing what Dave has to say, but it is good advice)

You can run your credit report from each agency (3) for free once a year. so he suggests you run one agency every four months and keep close tabs to what is going on.

Did you ever see the story of the woman who found the person using her identity? She had a photo from ATM cameras that the police gave her, and she could look at statements and see when and where the person was using her identity. There was nothing the police could do to catch her and her credit was being destroyed even though she could prove over and over that her identity was stolen. So one day, she sees the person and calls the police from her cell. She follows the person, giving chase on and off city busses and through stores and such. Finally, the police catch up and arrest the person. I mean, you have to do it yourself if you want these people caught!

My sister got her card info stolen, and computer equipment was shipped to a house in NJ. Why didn't the police go there and arrest them for receiving stolen property? But no, they didn't lift a finger.

Some of my customers want me to keep their CC stuff on file. I say - no way. I don't want to be the one responsible for someone getting their info stolen, ya know?

Smart. Don't keep it on file. That would be bad.

We have VERY rigid rules concerning customer information around here. We do not keep credit card numbers on file, anything with sensitive information (credit card numbers, checking account numbers, phone numbers, etc) MUST be kept locked away and we all have a lockable area provided. There are 5 people in the dealership who do random unannounced sweeps looking for that kind of stuff.

My personal stuff: I check my bank accounts every day. Credit card offers and those 'mail a check' offers go right into a shredder. My bank has the right to deny any charge to anything and check with me first. In fact, when i bought my laptop I was paying online with my debit card and it was turned down. I got a call about 5 minutes later asking about the charge (this was a Sunday morning). I'll gladly put up with a little inconvenience now to avoid a big inconvenience later.

I have noticed that my ISP has gone to a (allegedly) 'better' E mail system. I now occasionally get bogus E mails 'checking your banking information'. Problem is, they are usually for banks I have never heard of. I never got those before the 'improvements'. I have also gotten the PayPal and eBay scam E mails where they say you have to update your card information or they will suspend your account.

pete240z wrote: Dave Ramsey says....(I know, we are all sick of hearing what Dave has to say, but it is good advice) You can run your credit report from each agency (3) for free once a year. so he suggests you run one agency every four months and keep close tabs to what is going on.

That would be:

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp

and yes, that free credit report .com is NOT the place to go.

I am glad to hear about how some of you are proactive. I am going to get rid of all customer credit card info now. I'm a one man operation, so I don't have to worry about thieving employees, but making the effort will assure my customers that problems will not come from me.

pinchvalve, the story you relate is a perfect example of what I was talking about.

Everyone needs a shredder today. I come home and 95% of the mail goes straight into the shredder. The rest will find it's way there eventually. Buy the biggest one you can afford. I had a great one that finally gave up when some shiny happy person marketer from united way mailed me a nickle. The shredder, in a last dying act of defiance, shredded the nickle.

There's a big difference between having your credit card stolen and identity theft. Honestly, if someone gets access to your card, it's an inconvenience and not much else. You're not liable for the charges. That's why the card companies profile of your spending history, so something unusual will pop up and they can shut down a stolen card immediately. It's not because they care about you, it's because it costs them a bunch of money if the card is used fraudulently.

Now, if the banks were also liable for costs related to identity theft, it would dry up pretty quickly. It's all about motivation.

When someone beats an idenity theif within an inch of their life one day, the new news hot topic will be taking sides on right or wrong and the same banks that created this problem, and are now selling me insurance against it will have to deal with it proper

Let me add a few things to this topic that may help. I had 2 of my companies credit cards compromised in the last few months. One was done by a device that was installed on a gas pump and read all the data on the mag stripe. They made themselves a duplicate card. The second was due to the Heartland Breach my bank said, but I have no way of knowing where that took place. Having said all this, I check my account every morning. I found the charges from the first breach the next morning, went to the bank, saw the code was 90 which is full mag read. Since I am in the business of helping merchants get set up to accept credit cards at their business, I knew what to do. Even then, it wasn't easy. The first card was breached in Houston, far away from where I live. I filed a police report. Never heard from them. I proceeded early that morning to file chargebacks on all the transactions. What this does is force the merchant who took the card to produce proof, usually a receipt that I signed. After about 30 days my funds were returned to me. In the meantime, I had called the risk manager at the gas station and had him hold the CD with the persons picture on it and called to pizza joint to get an ID on the person. Yes, it is a pain when this happens. For those of you in business, I noticed someone said, my customers want me to keep their credit card info. PCI compliance has very clear rules on this as well as the government regulation called FACTA. I have been talking to every merchant I have over the course of the last year about PCI compliance and availing them of the rules. This is a video you may want to watch of what happened to one ladies family restaurant that was breached. This will make you think twice. If you have not talked to whoever set you up to accept credit cards, I suggest you call them and if they keep up with the business, should be able to help you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEOdnJ4WS-c&mode=related&search= and this one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0KtIgDfjY8&feature=related If you need any more info, just let me know

EricM wrote: PCI compliance. Look into it.

Yep. If more merchants did what they were supposed to do, it would cut a lot of problems.

But to be fair, people (customers) are unrealistic in their demands sometimes.

But I have seen quite a few instances where merchants have been sloppy and it cost them.

Carolinasgirl=canoe, I think...