To Catch a Scammer….

To fill you in, I got an order in the past week from a girl claiming to be in Germany. She didn’t order through my shopping cart-but my email. I knew at that point it was a bit fishy. But I played along to see where this would go. She was wanting to order 40 items of 4 different things that I carry. She said I could pick the scent-she gave me an address to check out the shipping costs through pamshippers. I did-as it wasn’t hurting me to do an estimate. They came back with an amount of $1800…right then I was like she isn’t going to go any farther. But she did-her order total would have been over $3000 with shipping. I told her I would need a valid credit card, with cvc, expiration date, address etc. She then came back with a credit card, but not one in her name. Now I have received orders before where the card was in the husband’s name-but the addresses were the same-the last names were the same etc.
So when I quesitoned her what the relationship was with her and that person-she then changed her story to it was her manager’s card and they would call me the next day. Problem was-this credit card was for someone in a southern state-and she was still claiming to be in Germany.
She gave me all of his information except a phone number. So when she didn’t immediately write me back I googled the white pages for this person’s phone number and called him.
I got their answering machine-but received a phone call back within 15 minutes. As I had suspected these kind people had NOT authorized this card to be used…..Hmmmmm did I catch her? or him? I gave the credit card information to this kind person-to find out YES it was one of their credit cards.
After that person called their credit card company they found that this person had also charged flowers to their card. And upon further investigation this person found out that the “scammer” was a manager for a rental car place out of Tennessee. Seems they had rented a car from an airport back in the spring-and the MANAGER…was the one using their card. Not only did the person go by another name (close though)-they were able to figure out her full name, address, and I had supplied the email. They are now going to be pressing charges against her.
I could give you her name that she went by-but it won’t help as if she were to do this again-she will most likely use a new email and a new name. But beware! I really didn’t think from the start that this order was valid-but I am glad that I pursued it as I might have saved these wonderful people more charges to their account.
I find it outrightly irritating that people out there are stealing other peoples information and using it for themselves. Did she not think that these people wouldn’t notice new charges? Did she think she would get a way with it with me? I led her to believe so. This scammer wanted me to charge the card asap…what she didn’t realize that an order that size would have taken me weeks to complete and IF I had been quick to do it-because heck the money would have been great. But in the end I would have had stock of items I put my money into and lost what I had invested, and these people would be fighting charges to their card that should have never happened. Scammers ruin it for out of country people that are legitimately placing valid orders. I do have a person in Italy, a couple in Australia that are legitimate…but I always 2nd guess them. It isn’t their fault, it is the scammers out there trying to take advantage of innocent people.
The scammer now knows she has been found out-I didn’t contact her again-but the person she tried to take advantage of did…and I am sure it felt good to let her know-as I wanted to say SHAME ON YOU…And to top it off-this person was in the US this whole time…
The person said they didn’t know how to thank me…Honestly? The good feeling I got from stopping if only 1 person was pay enough.
So take it from me-if the order seems to good to be true-then it probably is…and if you have credit, debit cards…check your statements each month-keep track of your bank accounts; especially if you can go online and sign up with your bank to view your statements in a secured setting. It might be the difference between someone taking your money or not. So I am feeling pretty good this week…There are many honest people out there-but you just have to watch out for the ones that aren’t. This isn’t the first time I have gotten an order like this one…but the last person faded off-and didn’t use a card that wasn’t theirs-to my knowledge…so I didn’t “catch” them…I may be a “small business” but maybe that is even better than being a big company that might have processed the order not realizing what was going on…who knows…Thanks for letting me share my story with you! Til Next Time….