My Litte Credit Fraud Adventure

On Wednesday, July 19th, 2005 (last date, just wanted to get that one in so we can see how long it takes to get this taken care of ) I took my cousin out for a birthday dinner to Mongolian BBQ. We went to Best Buy after we ate because he wanted The Count Of Monte Cristo (the book is soooo much better!) on DVD and I wanted to pick up a copy of The Simms 2. Wanted to ruin someone else's life with my bad decisions for a change I bought him the DVD with my game and a few DVDs I picked up. Impulse buy, naturally, but Die Hard on its own is worth $20, and this package had all three of them for $20!

I take him home, start watching one of the most terrible movies ever (Wrote a thread about it the next morning copying the commentary I sent a buddy of mine through the film via email. Warning: I do swear a couple of times in the copied email, but the movie was really terrible and when I thought to check for that today the edit button was disabled.) I go to bed, no big whoop.

The next morning I wake up, get ready for work, but am running a little late. Instead of grabbing breakfast at home, I run to the nearest gas station to pull some cash from an ATM, then was going to grab an egg McMuffin. I swipe my card, try to withdraw $40. "Insufficient Funds," the screen tells me. I think to myself, "there's no way I botched my account so badly, even with the $200 last night I should still have about $600 in my account!" I try again, who knows maybe the ATM misread the card and the person with the different card number had the same pin. What can I saw, I was confused and not thinking clearly. I try $10, same message. Oooookay...Swipe it again, this time checking the balance. I'm at -$1,500! My mouth dropped before I could control it, and I slowly walked out of the gas station staring at the receipt in disbelief.

I drive to work in a...shall we say less than good mood. Not the best mood to be in when you have about 20 miles of Chicago rush hour traffic, but somehow I make it in without killing anyone. I think I have K-Love and Michael Yussef to thank for that. I try getting customer service so I could possibly use my card number instead of my account number to find out what the heck happened, but couldn't find the option to bypass the automation. Very distracted at work, right at 5 I was out the door and headed home to get my last bank statement, and therefore my account number, to hear my last 5 transactions and proceed from there.

Naturally, traffic was horrible, and I didn't get home until about 6:45. Doh! I get home, grab the bank statement and call the number on the back of my card. When listening to the purchases made with my card, I hear the first, no problem, I hear the second, and my mouth drops. For some reason it really hadn't hit me that someone else was using my card until that moment. The charge was for $691 and some change. After that, the same thing, $691 and the same amount of change. The third was for about $800 and was followed by an overdraft fee. It's really hard to explain what happened in my head at this. At once I hit * on my phone to go up a menu and hit 0 for customer service (I'd heard the option this time), and at the same time thinking, dang, I had a lot more money in there than I thought I did. It was a really strange mix of emotions.

I'm on hold for about 45 minutes. Every few minutes a recording would come on saying they were experiencing a high call volume, and it could take up to 5 minutes, maybe even more. A co-worker had mentioned reading something about a bank's database being hacked into and losing a lot of credit information; after about a half hour on hold, I started wondering if that was the case. After all, the message only expected a 5 minute wait, it's a big bank chain, so I figured they had many folks on staff.

I talked to the woman, and she was really cool. I asked her a lot of questions, she cancled my card, and filed a claim for me. Then I had 5 days to submit a signed letter to them explaining how I found out I was missing a butt-load of money, and what I did to confirm it. So I wrote about the same thing I did here, but with less detail, threw my cell number on it since I usually can't be reached at home (the number they have), signed it and faxed it. That was this morning. Now I sit, wait, and wonder.

Now I have two questions for y'all. First, do you know what I can do if the claim investigators believe I somehow authorized these payments? Second, have any of you gone through this, and if so, how long does this process usually take? I mean, that was a hefty little chunk of change some punk "borrowed" from me, and I'd like to know when to expect to get it back. That was probably the only question I forgot to ask...

sorry to hear about what you had to go thru, it is a horrible position to be.

here's my experience with bank fraud, I never updated the thread, but I did get my money back from Bank of America. I can't remember exactly how long but it was around 7-10 days to have the claims processed and funds returned completely including all the bank fees for overdrafts and such that occurred with it.
www.belowtopsecret.com...

good luck JJ, just keep on top of your claim with your bank, if you don't hear from them, call them,

That's awful jake!

But the good news is the credit card readers track whether your card was swiped or the numbers were punched in manually. Seeing as you still had your card, you should have no problem getting your money back. No signature, no swipy, no card imprint - no making junglejake pay for it.

Sucks for the merchant, but they didn't follow the rules, so it's their own fault. Cost of doing business these days.

Well, time for a followup. On Friday morning I faxed in that letter, but recieved no confirmation that they got it. So today I tried calling in to confirm it was recieved so my claim could proceed. The service this time around was a little less friendly than last time, but the wait on hold was only for about 20 seconds, so that was nice. They have no record of my letter being faxed in, but she explained to me it can take them up to 4 days to enter it into the system. When I asked her how I could find out before that that they recieved it, she told me I could not before they entered it into the system.

Well, concerned, I asked her what that meant for the 5 day limit to get the letter in to their offices. First, she started by saying she had never heard of a 5 day limit, but I had 5 days to get my letter in (at this point, the only thought in my head was "wha...?") so they could enter it into the system.

So as of now, all I can do is hope they got it, and if they didn't my money is lost. I'm going to try calling again tomorrow and hopefully speak with someone more helpful.

Also, Duzey, if it was someone who hacked/had access to a database from a store I made an online purchase directly from my CC, the merchant would have still followed all the online rules. What happens then?

I think you really ought to file a police report to cover your arse. Get copies of your CC statements of what these purchases were made for and there will probably be a paper trail with a bogus shipping address to someone else if it was something that needed shipped. I can't imagine a single purchase for over $600 and some odd dollars be for something like an internet porn site. I think whomever got a hold of your CC # bought something and unless they are just being sadistic, they can be traced back to where the merchandise was sent.

The police would be more than happy to get an easy case and go bust someone. Not to mention they will file criminal charges against the people responsible, you could probably file a civil suit against them for some damages and aggrevation. A greedy lawyer would probably be happy to make sure it costs them all the appropriate fees and filing costs as well.

This kind of thing is all to easy in a retail store by dishonest employees. We had a card reader for CC purchases and if I recall, it printed out a nice reciept with the persons CC#, expiration date, and name. Anyone with some gahoonas could take one of these and go buy something if they wanted.

Unfortunately I don't get my bank statement for another couple of weeks, but then I could take it to the cop shop. I was under the impression, though, that the claim I just filed was a criminal one. 'Spose that'll be a question I ask about tomorrow, too. If it's not, I'll head to the bank and get a copy of my statement and bring that down the the ol' poe-lease.

Originally posted by junglejake
Unfortunately I don't get my bank statement for another couple of weeks, but then I could take it to the cop shop. I was under the impression, though, that the claim I just filed was a criminal one. 'Spose that'll be a question I ask about tomorrow, too. If it's not, I'll head to the bank and get a copy of my statement and bring that down the the ol' poe-lease.

I believe only the prosecutor in the jurisdiction can actually file a criminal charge on someone, but perhaps the CC company will take it to them when they are done looking at the information. Nowadays, they are beginning to take fraud more seriously because they don't want to eat the cost. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, it was difficult to find the culprits of something like this and the card holder was still liable in the end. I wouldn't hesitate too long in taking it to the po-po. They will open a case immediately, and you still have the option to take some time getting your bank statements. Who knows, they may actually do a lot of the leg work on everyones behalf and trace who made the purchases. I guess that is what detectives are paid for.

From what I understood, the CC company has insurence for this kind of thing, and if they find I didn't spend the cash, they automatically refund my money, and proceed to investigate who now has their money. I could be completely wrong, though, and will call a lawyer tonight. (Family, so no consultation fee ) Thanks for the heads up!

If it was an online merchant, then it is tougher for them to track down the loser that stole your money, but you still don't have to pay for it. Depending on the purchase type, they may be able to recover the loss. If it was a database hack on the banks side, the merchant may have a legitimate claim against the bank. If the merchant was hacked, it's not something you have to pay for.

It still sucks for the merchant but it's not your problem.

And I agree with the people who have suggested you file a police report. That way if anything else pops up, identity theft and whatnot, you already have a record of this on file.


[edit on 25-7-2005 by Duzey]

Jake, when you've survived this mess, IMO you should think about getting one of those accounts where they replace your money by the next day or so......let us know how it turns out.....whether someone hacked the bank, or got your pin, or what.

Oh, and you might get a paper shredder to destroy all old paper work that has your account or SS number, to avoid future probs.

Good luck

Well, it's been taken care of. About two hours after I faxed in the explanation of what happened, all of my cash and all the fees were refunded to me, but I was never notified. It wasn't until yesterday, when I called them to find out what happened, that they told me last Friday it had all been taken care of. So, yesterday (monday), I went in, closed my old account and opened a new one. Hopefully this is the end of it I never did get an explanation of what they found, and after talking to customer service, it sounds like I never will. They weren't willing to tell me a thing.

Im glad you got it worked out, I was going to point out that credit card companys and banks are pretty good about returning money fast. What do they care the goverment backs it. Thats why its a fed case if the person gets caught, or if he would rob a bank.

If they would have figured you had done it, they would have looked at the camras at the stores. If it was online store, track IP's.

Glad it got worked out fast.

Just thought that I would quip in on this. I posted this on ATS this morning
www.abovetopsecret.com...'

It is relevent to some of what has been sadi on this thread. Banks are supposed to validate that a card being used is the one that was issued by the bank. Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case.
The use of "white" cards by criminals making withdrawls from other people's bank accounts is on the rise.
One bank is estimating that it is losing about 1 million dollars a month due to this type of fraud.
Good to hear that you were able to finally get everything worked out!

My father-in-law went throu that and it was solved pretty easily...he had to call both the bank and the company that had made the "fraudulent" charges, and they gave him a set of instructions to follow...hope yours can go smoothly as well..

hmmm...

you think you can pick the nick-name " Uncle Credit " ??? hehehe..sowweeyyy ..couldnt resist

hehe maybe Uncle No-Credit