Credit Card Fraud - How to Pursue Legally?

You don't.

You report the fraud to the CC company, they will take all the info, remove the charges, and will tell you that they will contact you if they need further information.

They will 99.99% not contact you, and you will never hear anything else about it.

The CC company will suck the money back from the vendor, and the business will eat it.

 

what Mike said is EXACTLY how it happened in my case about 3 months ago. I know that you are pi**ed off, but generally these people hide under a veil of annonomity and are very rarely brought to justice. You should be made whole again as far as your money is concerned and the vendor will eat the charges and then pass the losses along to the rest of their customers in the form of higher prices on goods and services. This is part of the reason why stuff costs so much nowadays. Retail fraud is getting to be a larger and larger part of the price that everyone pays.

In my case it happened on a Friday with a Debit card which put my checking account balance into the negative by about $8k (we have roll over to a money market account) and really screwed us up for the weekend. By Monday everything was back to normal. Report it and the credit card company will handle the rest.

 

I understand what Mike is saying, but is there anyway you can find the exact person? Couldnt you use BestBuy's security camera's to see the fraud check out at the exact time and date off the recipt?

Good luck with this. Really tough situation.

Chris

 

I guess that the answer to this is maybe. But then you have a picture of a guy...probably looks like a lot of other guys....who is probably wearing a hat and sunglasses. You would have something to work with, but not a lot. If they don't catch them in the act of the fraud, there is a good chance that they will never catch them.

Like Mike said...the loss is going to eventually fall back to Best Buy. The person who had their card number pilfered will be made whole by the CC company who will then charge back the loss to the vendor who will then raise their prices on everything by a nickle to make the money back.

 

Wow. That really sucks. I feel for you. What really sucks is that the purchases were made online, rather than in the BestBuy store. I dont understand once again, why BestBuy cant disclose the shipping adress for the HP. I would definatley see if the police could get the shipping adress from that laptop. As the economic crunch continues and more jobs are lost, credit-card fraud will become more popular.

Best of luck with this situation, it pisses me off just reading about it..

Chris

 

If it was done online it probably is going to be a non issue. Most of the online retailers won't ship an item to an address that is different from the billing address that is on record with your CC company. It will show as a pending transaction on your credit card then will probably just fall off...no reason to charge back Best Buy as they would have never shipped the item anyhow. I had this problem with Brownells getting some AR-15 magazines shipped to my work and using a credit card that is billed to my house.

 

Just deal with the CC company and move on. No big deal other than having to start using a new card.

 

It happened on both my Visa card and my wife's Visa card. The credit card company caught the unusual activity right away (in less than a day in my case) and fixed the problems themselves, and apparently did not follow up at all to try to catch the bad guys. Police weren't interested. It was about $3000 on my card, but over $15,000 on my wife's card. I believe it was all online purchases.

 

You have to look at this from Best Buy's perspective.... someone calls them and says their card was used illegally. At this point, Best Buy has essentially been told "my CC company is going to take $4k from you". Best Buy is looking to minimize their loss as much as possible. Disclosing to the CC holder where the item was shipped does nothing to further that goal. Let's say the CC holder goes to the address, confronts the person, a fight erupts and someone gets shot and killed. Then the family sues Best Buy. Or lets say an angry boyfriend tries to find out where his ex-GF is living by claiming she used his card to commit fraud. He doesn't have the order number, but wants details of the order. If they give them out, then he goes there and kills her, and Best Buy gets sued.

Just many reasons why they won't give out that info... once the CC holder claims they never placed the order, then they are disclaiming ownership of it, and have no more right to the order information than some Joe off the street. Best Buy has things to lose by giving out the information, and nothing to gain, so they wouldn't give it out.

And I know what you're thinking... "well what if the person gets caught, that's good for BB". But it's not like that... the bank sucks the money back from BB, the CC holder gets their $$$ back. If the cops find the person, it's almost certain the merchandise was either opened, or re-sold, or would be used as evidence, etc. Also, Best Buy would be insured, so they don't really care about the loss personally, the way the CC holder does.

Just food for thought.

 

Most retails will ship to an alternate shipping address. Best Buy, Sears, Amazon, Buy.com, Dell, you name it - they will all ship to an alternate address.

 

Also, what will usually happen is the thief will either...

1) Have an inside guy at UPS who will deliver it to an alternate address

2) Call UPS and redirect the package (supposedly only the shipper can do this but it's not too hard to fake that you're calling from the BB shipping dept)

3) Have it delivered to an empty house or where they know someone isn't home... let it sit for a while and go grab it when they are sure nobody is watching

4) "Accidentally" bump into the driver on the route, before it's delivered... and say "hey, I am Bob Smith from 110 Main St, you got a package for me?". If you can convince the driver, you get the package

5) Use an address where they know the person won't be, then grab the delivery tag from the door and go pick it up at the Depot

6) Have an intermediary who is unaware of the scam forward the package... like a little old lady who thinks she found a "work at home" job making $100 a day "forwarding packages"


Plus, most police departments just don't care... they have too many speeding tickets to give out that generate revenue vs. putting resources into crime solving that may turn up nothing. Sad, but true.

 

Since both my wife and I knew for about 99% certain where our card numbers had been stolen, it seemed like it would take only minimal "digging" to find out who did it, but nothing happened.

 

A little bit off topic, but I've always wondered. Do debit cards offer fraud protection too, or is that just credit card companies??

thanks,
Ben

 

Debit cards offer fraud protection too but your liability may be much higher than that if a credit card is used. Most bank voluntarily limit your liability.

 

i did not see much written on here, or on the news, but a few months ago, a Visa / Mastercard database was copied and sold on the black market. a gazillion peoples names, addresses and active credit card numbers were leaked out. some idiot thought it was cool to buy a few itunes and then charge $12,700 on one of my credit cards online, on a Sunday. i was at work on a project, and came home and caught it. the banks fraud folks were calm and took care of it. they sent an affidavit, that i signed, and gave me a new card. they said the idiot was not likely to see any of the stuff they"bought" as the shipping address did not match, and that they had killed the transactions within a few hours of the crime. not sure why these guys even bother doing this .

on a side note, watch your credit card companies. Bank of America just lost me as a customer for life, they changed my 7.9% fixed rate credit card for a 13.94% variable rate card, and i have cash, great credit. and have never been late on any bills of any type. so i closed my major accounts with them.

 

AFAIK in Canada, there is less protection for these situations with Debit cards since they require a PIN code for any withdrawls/purchases. If the card has been stolen and you had the pin number written on the back, you may be SOL with the bank.

CC's however, if it is stolen (all they require is a signature to do a in-person purchase) they will reverse the charges and do an internal investigation with the companies involved, you as a consumer are protected from fraud (cash advances off the card are another story).

If your card gets compromised, do as Mike stated in post #2; Call bank, have them deal with it. Don't try and play detective, no point in wasting your time.

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Best Buys staff is supposed to cross check the shipping address of the online orders against the billing address on the credit card (they can do this). If they slipped up and shipped it out somewhere else, they will be held liable and the Bank will take back the money from them.


The only time it gets really sketchy is when you are the victim of a bigger fraud ring where they are monitoring your mail and signing for your packages. Happens, but not as frequently.

 

Sorry, you won't get any info and they won't do anything. I had a guy that was doing odd jobs for me steal a check out of my checkbook and write it to HIMSELF. The bank gave me my money back and didn't prosecute the guy. It was for $1,500. If people really knew how the system worked, it would break down over night.