I had a slightly different but also unsettling fraud happen to me this summer.
Credit card number stolen most likely at a restaurant by staff. In two hours they ran up $2k of online orders across 6 stores.
But here’s the weird part - they shipped everything to me. Mostly in my name but also with my first or last name swapped. I realized this as I was reporting the fraudulent charges to my credit card but then I started getting informed delivery mails from UPS and fedex.
Apparently it’s a package interception scam where they try to redirect the package to a different address before it’s delivered. They failed at the second part so I had a dozen packages show up over a couple weeks I then had to deal with returning.
Real time suck. Dozens of calls and mails. I didn’t have original purchase order numbers in some cases nor the email address.
Some stores were not equipped well to handle this, some told me to keep and donate the clothing. It was all fairly mass market high priced DTC stuff like Bombas.
Weird.
My wife was freaked out that they got our home address from our name on the credit card fast enough to make all these orders in under two hours.
What's crazy about the original story is that you can buy something on Amazon with your own credit card from a highly rated vendor and go to jail because the seller was involved in a criminal enterprise!!!
I know Amazon marketplace sells sketchy products, but I didn't know not doing my due diligence there could expose me to criminal liability.
So we blocked the order, reported the card to Stripe and alerted the police, the store and the unknowing consumer. In one case, we got a hold of the cardholder who confirmed his wallet had been stolen. For a few weeks, we played a big game of whack-a-mole and prevented a dozen instances of triangle fraud.
How often do police respond? is there a follow-up? I imagine the police get inundated with reports and are overwhelmed to to anything . Would it go to FBI or just local ?
You could do all that, or just require PINs for credit purchases. They're not near as good as passwords, but PINs are still much, much better than nothing.
steveBK123 ·7 days ago
Credit card number stolen most likely at a restaurant by staff. In two hours they ran up $2k of online orders across 6 stores.
But here’s the weird part - they shipped everything to me. Mostly in my name but also with my first or last name swapped. I realized this as I was reporting the fraudulent charges to my credit card but then I started getting informed delivery mails from UPS and fedex.
Apparently it’s a package interception scam where they try to redirect the package to a different address before it’s delivered. They failed at the second part so I had a dozen packages show up over a couple weeks I then had to deal with returning.
Real time suck. Dozens of calls and mails. I didn’t have original purchase order numbers in some cases nor the email address. Some stores were not equipped well to handle this, some told me to keep and donate the clothing. It was all fairly mass market high priced DTC stuff like Bombas.
Weird. My wife was freaked out that they got our home address from our name on the credit card fast enough to make all these orders in under two hours.
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jjmarr ·7 days ago
I know Amazon marketplace sells sketchy products, but I didn't know not doing my due diligence there could expose me to criminal liability.
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paulpauper ·7 days ago
How often do police respond? is there a follow-up? I imagine the police get inundated with reports and are overwhelmed to to anything . Would it go to FBI or just local ?
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dlcarrier ·7 days ago
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benlkatz ·7 days ago
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