Forum Moderators: buckworks
The transaction is preauthorized, so he's got a live card. I alert the issuing bank, and this time they thank me! This is so unusual, that it snaps me out of my habit of just deleting the user account and order-I leave his user account, and update his order status to "Shipped".
Yes, it's a lie. I didn't really ship it. I almost feel bad.
That afternoon, we get two more orders from Singapore-roughly $5000 each. The same guy or some of his friends-so I approve their orders too. Shipped, Shipped, Shipped.
Whoops-Just got another one! Let's see... $5,233.50 to Singapore.
I wonder how many card numbers they'll give me?
I wonder how long they'll wait for their orders?
I wonder how long before I get tired of alerting issuing banks?
At least until I can rig an inexpensive package that squirts rancid smelling permanent ink everywhere when it's opened...
;-)
After 5 or 6 wordy exchanges over many days, I tell them I spoke to our "security dept" which is insisting on a wire transfer. Thats the end of them.
It is a small enough amount that they might bite.
Good luck.... and i recomend spending the money on beer for you and a friend while you tell the story of how you scammed the smammers.
One suspects that theiving $1 from your local neighbourhood convicted felon,
remains theft,,
you would need to discuss that with the lawyer you might soon be needing
So say the other criminals are caught, an Interpol goes thru their transactions an there is your name, as an individual who has received money from the other criminal
you imagine therefore that interpol will not apply to have you questioned?
I would not worry about that, I think they have better things to do.
Scam the scammers, I say. They deserve all kinds of grief for the lives they have ruined.
20 bucks, when these clowns are stealing millions
it is a service charge for the bandwidth and time they consume, send them a receipt
So say the other criminals are caught, an Interpol goes thru their transactions an there is your name, as an individual who has received money from the other criminalyou imagine therefore that interpol will not apply to have you questioned?
Getting even for all your friends at WebmasterWorld who have been ripped off.
Even if it is just a matter of stringing them along and wasting their time, that is less time spent scheming. If many merchants start wasting their time, so they couldn't tell which merchants were screwing with them and which ones were going to fulfill their fake orders, attempted fraud becomes a much less fruitful proposition.
I think ethically that wasting the time of a scammer is perfectly acceptable, whereas reverse-scamming them, though giving a warm feeling inside, is not, and indeed is probably illegal as suggested above.
For example, I get 10,000+ SPAM attempts a day.
I don't feel in the least bad about tying up their open connections to me for hours or even days, which is a bit less resource for them to apply to SPAMming someone else... After all they came to talk (cr@p) to me, so I just keeeeeeep talking veerrrrrryyyyy slloooooowwwwwwwwwwllllllllllyyyy! This is called "tar-pitting". Bogging down scammers in a tar-pit is fine IMHO.
Rgds
Damon
--
As I've said many times, I don't believe they make millions. Otherwise these scams would go on in other places in the world instead of a few places in Africa (or overseas Africans)
Tagline: "Serving Springfield, Shelbyville and the TriCounty Area Since 2005."
Explain that Granny and her Mom (lay it on thick) run the brand new site but can't figure out how to set up their shopping cart. Exports encouraged. But they don't take online orders yet. Mail orders okay.
"Send $20 for Granny's latest Rolex catalog. Free world wide express shipping with every Rolex"
Just wait for the twentys to roll in from Africa
Oh, I do.
I think it is a franchise operation for some organized crime gangs.
It does not take long to get to millions when you steal a thousand dollars at a time. A scammer just needs to place a 100 orders in a day with stolen credit cards. Maybe they succeed once or twice a day. It adds up quick.
They would not keep doing it if it was not profitable.
It is the modern day equivelent of shoplifting.
We've discussed this before, but it's possible these are run like franchises or even MLM (Multi Level Marketing) where the real money is made by "franchisors" who own the internet cafes and rent computer time. Top level guys in "Pink Cadillacs" need to convince the Nigerian "fresh meat" that they can work their way up the ladder.
This is the same model US crack distributors use, BTW.
(see the best selling book, "Freakenomics")
The transaction is preauthorized, so he's got a live card. I alert the issuing bank, and this time they thank me! This is so unusual, that it snaps me out of my habit of just deleting the user account and order-I leave his user account, and update his order status to "Shipped".
You're not capturing any of the funds, are you? (If it's a Sale or Capture, you would need to send out a refund, since you wouldn't want to be hit with the chargeback when the real card holder finds the charge on their account.)
You wouldn't believe how much Visa/MC/etc claim that pre-auth doesn't really exist, even though you can point to it in the protocol manuals all you like, so a preauth really doesn't take money, but it does ding the available credit, sometimes invisibly.
So doing a preauth on an almost-certainly-stolen card is possibly a service to the real card-holder as it reduces the available credit to be spent fraudulently by the scammer...
Rgds
Damon
Anyway, I haven't gotten any more orders from them yet. 6 orders for $34,136.30 seems to be enough for now. They got a little more particular over time. The first few transactions they just picked a few upper end items using our "shop by Price" feature. Once those were approved, they started spending more time, looking in different categories, reading descriptions, viewing enlarged images, etc.
And now, they wait for their orders to arrive. And wait. And wait....
And oh, one other thing. PLEASE don't use an ink- / odour-rigged box... you'll only end up spraying some hapless and bewildered customs official. ;-)
- Varun.
you've said "shipped" - fraudsters share that info - your web address will soon be passed around .........
<edit> just checked-the shipping information is to indonesian addresses and postal codes, they just used Singapore as the ship to country</edit>
-Good call on the spray. I've since abandoned the idea as it's almost certainly illegal, but you raise another good point.
Railman- I'm not sure that's true. If you discovered a gold mine, would you share it or keep it quiet? After the initial few orders, ostensibly from the same scammer-the fraudulent orders abruptly stopped.
I am still getting some poorly written requests for tracking numbers, which give me a grin and a chuckle.
What we do is to auto scan the IP address, also prompt the customer for his nationality and resident address. Other item to check is the email address.
If results do not match we try to call. No response we don't charge or ask for payment by fax (with sig.)
Besides stolen cards another risk are disputes. Bottom line is that any payment over the internet (i.e. card not present) can be disputed by the card holder.
Visa doesn't care, issuing bank doesn't care.
So, who will join me in "Shipping" (wink, wink, nod, nod) fraudulent orders? If as a whole, the industry embraced the practice, I can see it significantly curtailing fraudulent orders.
