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Collections agency against fraudsters?

A silver lining?

         

wayzel

4:34 am on Jan 28, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Fraudsters come to my site and use John Doe's credit card to buy phone airtime. John Doe, who never himself bought airtime, requests a chargeback. John Doe always wins, and so I lose the cost of service used by the fraudster plus the chargeback fee.

But, what if you know who the fraudster is? Can you legally go after the fraudster to pay up for the airtime used, plus administrative fees, etc.?

I know the identities of the recipients who "took delivery of" the services purchase with John Doe's stolen credit card.

Can I send a collections agency to get the money? The argument would be, "you are the registered owner of this phone number, and this phone number was the originating source of $XX worth of calls fraudulently charged to John Doe's credit card, so YOU are liable for paying for all of these expenses. We will prosecute to the full extent of law if $XXX is not paid in full immediately."

The fraudsters are in the US/Canada. What do you guys think? Worth pursuing?

I guess this would be analgous to any ecommerce site owner having a magical list of all the people who falsely signed for delivery of your shipped products (paid for with stolen credit cards,) and asking, 'what would you do with the list?"

Corey Bryant

9:22 am on Jan 28, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I wrote an article on selling your chargebacks actually. They will not buy chargebacks that are known to be fraud (i.e. a police report has been filed), but they actually might buy them to go after said fraudster.

The only problem is - they buy them for pennies on the dollar, so if your TOS is not written to possibly cover this, it might not be worth it

-Corey