Will Trice wrote:
- quote -

Will, I have another WAG. Let's say you (you being "a criminal with a T3
line in Estonia") stumbled across some kind of site-referral scheme
like: when someone clicks through Site A and orders from Site B, Site A
gets $5 for every order for Site B's Stomach-izer with complimentary set
of steak knives. Site A doesn't care where the thing ends up, just that
an order is placed, so places 50 orders using stolen credit cards, but
where the bill-to and ship-to are the same.

It's a nickel and dime kind of crime but think about it...Site B might
know that their fraudulent order + return rate is say 5%, and they make
$100 on every item because it's just some piece of junk made for 17
cents in Guangdong Dongguan. So they're willing to pay the $5 and eat
any of your kind of orders...it would cost them more than $5 to reverse
the charges or track down the offender - it's just a cost of doing
business. Plus, Site B is worried more about the scenario of "bill to
Will, ship to Estonia" - they don't think anyone will go through the
trouble of submitting a fraudulent order just for the referral bonus.
Hey, I think we just came up with a scheme here!

Or, WAG 1.1: Same scenario and site B is run by someone who just isn't
thinking clearly. You hear these stories of people getting click-ad
bills way over what they'd figured on, not realizing that there may be
roomsful of Estonians paid to do nothing but sit and click links all
day, so it's certainly possible.

-Tad

zxcvbob wrote:
- quote -

Hey, was it you that sent me the Ab Roller?

-Will

william dot trice at ngc dot com

Gene E. Utterback, EA, RFC, ABA wrote:

- quote -

Indeed, I wrote here a long while back about a credit card company
shutting off my card when I used it to buy a coke from a coke machine in
the San Francisco airport (SF is not my home city). When I asked them
why they shut it down it was for the very reason you cite above, they
thought it might be a small test by ID thieves.

As to double-checking my statement, that's good advice. I balance my
statements just like my checkbook each month against my credit card
receipts anyway so I would have caught even small charges without Citi's
help. But I still think it's cool that they caught the bad charges
themselves.

-Will

william dot trice at ngc dot com

Edify wrote:

- quote -

Well, now that you put it this way, I wonder if the mailorder companies
are somehow still getting paid? With the possible exceptions of Bluefly
and Napster, these were all fly-by-night operations, one of them was
even out of country (Great Britain). Could these fly-by-nights be in
cahoots with the fraudsters? Does Citi still pay them in a case like
this? Perhaps they just rack up a bunch of small charges and Citi gets
stuck with the bill?

-Will

william dot trice at ngc dot com

Will Trice wrote:
[snip]
- quote -


Whenever someone offers me a mint, I assume there was a reason for it. I
don't ask a lot of questions, I just say "Thanks". HTH ;-)

Bob

"Will Trice" <me[at]invalid.com> wrote in message
news:gpk20u$59o$1[at]news.motzarella.org...
- quote -

I've heard, unconfirmed of course, that ID thieves are getting wiser. Many
times they will test a card with small transactions to see if it gets caught
by the system before spending the big bucks. It is also possible that there
were charges that Citi did NOT catch as being out of the ordinary. Were I
you, I'd double check my statement and look at all the charges and confirm
every one of them.

Gene E. Utterback, EA, RFC, ABA


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On Mar 16, 2:09*am, Edify <ewm...[at]hotmail.com> wrote:
- quote -


Except in OP's case the merchandise were sent to the OP, so whether
Citi caught the bogus charges or not, the perpetrator wouldn't have
gotten the merchandise because they were sent to the address of the
cardholder.

Sounds more like an inside job to me Will. Someone who knows you and
could write down your CC details is messing with you. Maybe that
ex-girlfriend whom you told to not call you, coworker who did
not like comments about his smelly socks, etc.

I hope that I am wrong.

i

On Mar 15, 6:12 pm, Will Trice <m...[at]invalid.com> wrote:

"So if Citi is going to reverse the charges (and I presume they will
not
pay the mail-order companies), and I receive the products, what do
the
folks who perpetrated the fraud get out of all of this? Was this
just
for kicks?"

Fishermen cast their nets realizing that they will drag-up much more
than what will make them money at market. You represent a potion of
undesirable catches that will be tossed back, many people won’t get a
call from Citi or any other card co, others will catch the charges but
may end up doing business with the merchants. If this tactic is being
used, it’s working at some level…of the this you can be certain.

Under the premise that understanding and avoiding scams is relevant to
financial planning, I'd like to relate a story to this audience and then
ask the question that appears in the subject line of this post.

So several weeks ago I get a call from Citi's fraud department and they
want me to call immediately because they think they've picked up
fraudulent activity on my credit card. I called them and they told me
about suspect transactions that were hitting my account and asked me if
they were mine. Indeed, the transactions were not mine, so my account
was closed and I received a new credit card with a new number. All this
went down right when that big data breach happened at Heartland Payment
Systems (they process credit card transactions amongst other things) so
I'd guess that that was how my account was compromised.

Shortly afterwards, I started receiving some mailorder crap from
fly-by-night companies, like that government grant CD scam that was
reported about in Consumer Reports, a subscription for White Tea with
Acai capsules, sera anti-aging creams, total cleanse pills, etc.

Lo and behold, when I received my monthly statement, I discovered that
this mailorder crap had been charged to my account, and in fact, these
were the very charges that tipped off Citi. Only two fraudulent charges
did not result in something being shipped to me, a small charge to
Napster and a ~$270 charge to Bluefly (now I get their marketing
literature in the mail so they obviously have my address).

So if Citi is going to reverse the charges (and I presume they will not
pay the mailorder companies), and I receive the products, what do the
folks who perpetrated the fraud get out of all of this? Was this just
for kicks?

Or perhaps someone is trying to give me a hint by sending me anti-aging
cream... whoever it is also tried to send me an Ab Roller, but my
account was already closed when the charge hit... Interestingly, I
tried to call the White Tea company to tell them to cancel my
subscription, but both phone numbers on their literature are dead. Hmmm.

-Will

william dot trice at ngc dot com