Africans In China

In case you haven’t kept up-to-date on the rise in Internet fraud, watch out. They’re out there waiting to steal your money.

Internet thieves from West Africa and elsewhere send out millions of emails recruiting unsuspecting people to transfer funds and ship stolen merchandise, usually purchased on the Internet. In return, the “mules” who do the dirty work, get paid for transferring funds in-and-out of bank accounts and shipping stolen goods.

In my case, a thief in Africa (could wring his/her/its neck) ordered a Compaq computer and an Xbox from MobileDiscoveries, my eCommerce site (now offline) using a stolen credit card. The transaction was approved by Authorize.net and the issuing bank, even with a bill-to name that did not match the credit card. Yes, that’s true. Despite advanced security used in credit card transaction approvals, most transactions are authorized without even checking the card holder’s NAME. Figure that one out.

MobileDiscoveries was a new consumer electronics site and I was still learning the ropes about people and organizations who don’t think twice about ripping you off.  So I shipped the two items to West Virginia, even though the ship-to address differed from the bill-to address. At that time, I hadn’t turned on all of my merchant account’s fraud controls and my shopping cart’s IP identifier that tells you the location of the computer used for credit card transactions.

Well, you know the story. The real owner of the credit card saw the charges on his bill, notified his bank, which immediately notified my merchant account company, which debited my business checking account for the chargeback.

I contested the chargeback and asked for further investigation, including my calling the police department in a small West Virginia town.  I had previously called the mule’s neighbor, who didn’t know her but commented “she does seem to receive a lot of packages.”

Just received a callback from the sheriff investigating the lady, who claims she had an “arrangement” with a Steve Hackson, who moved to Africa from Pennsylvania (nice switch in climates) and only lately became suspicious of the “arrangement” when Steve (or whoever) asked her to ship increasing loads of products. (The sheriff impounded all the merchandise in her apartment.)

Too late for me, unfortunately. The Xbox and Compaq computer already shipped to Africa…and I’m out $2.500 (the cost of merchandise from my wholesaler and the chargeback). While MobileDiscoveries was live, I canceled over 60 suspicious orders after receiving fraud alerts within minutes of the purchase.

If you’re wondering why your credit card company, even in low-interest times, charges outrageous interest rates, look no further than the BILLIONS of dollars written off by banks and other credit card issuers due to Internet and retail fraud. In fact, if a credit card is actually stolen (not in my case), and the thief buys from a retail store, the credit card issuer writes off the loss and makes up for it by raising YOUR interest rates and shark-loan default rates approaching 30%.

A closing comment. I received a notice from CitiBank, notifying me they are increasing interest rates, over-credit line fees and other charges this past Sunday. Although I’ve been a loyal CitiBank credit card customer for years and pay off my balance each month, the bank on the same day the Feds were bailing them out tried a fast one.

Although the increased interest rates and fees don’t affect me directly, I was on the phone with CitiBank customer service in five minutes to “opt-out” of the additional fees once my credit card expired.

Know what’s amazing? The CS rep didn’t seem a bit concerned that CitiBank was losing a loyal customer who charges thousands of dollars a year, pays on time and generates profits for her bank.

After the rep asked “is that all,” I said “yes.” I told her that I would immediately stop using the card and close the account. She didn’t seem a bit disturbed. So I asked her: “Aren’t you concerned about losing loyal, paying customers?…Aren’t you even going to try saving my account?”

She finally got my message, put someone else on the line, who immediately lowered my interest rate but claimed he couldn’t change the other increased fees.

There’s more to tell about CitiBank and its efforts to destroy Morgan Stanley, the investment bank. But I’ll leave that for another post.

Meanwhile, go chase some mules for me, eh? And if you find Steve Hackson in Africa, get my merchandise back, please.

(marketingbeyond)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 8:33 am and is filed under Information Technology, Weird things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.