Thief wants to become customer

Dumb Malaysian credit card fraudster wants to purchase my product for real

[HRoth]

For the past couple of years, I experienced periodic attempts to put through bogus/stolen credit card numbers originating from Malaysia. I removed Malaysia as a possible shipping country from the cart, but that didn't stop them. I used the cart to block the phoney email address they were using, but that worked only a little while. After the last attack, which was over 30 transactions in a row, I decided it would be worth it to pay for Authorize.net's Fraud Suite so I could block ip addresses and multiple transactions. I suspected that most of the Malaysian attempts were coming from one person or a small group of people, probably young teenagers, because I could see that they came to my site from a yahoo email url.

The other day I got an email from someone who had made an attempt to purchase and failed. He wanted to know why Malaysia was not listed on the shipping countries. The address he put in looked familiar. I told him that I had a lot of fraud from Malaysia and had had anti-fraud software installed. He cheerfully emailed back that he was one of the people trying to commit fraud on my website and that he was proud of how much fraud came from Malaysia. He now wanted to buy a normal amount of my product with a bank draft he would send by mail.

I took the name he put in the shopping cart and found he had a freebie website about himself and his family and girlfriend where he gives his real name. He is in fact 20, not 14, as I had thought, and the son of wealthy parents. He imagines himself to be a hiphop badass.

So my question is this: what do I do about this? I have written various responses to him in my head, and in my mind I have done everything from putting up a webpage about him to reporting him to the Dept. of the Treasury for attempted wire fraud. It angers me that I have had to waste time and money on account of this ridiculous, spoiled brat. Yet in my heart I feel the whole thing is a waste of my time and I am leaning towards doing nothing about it.

What would you do, if anything?

[coconutz]

..Thief wants to become customer

I think it's more like thief tries another method to screw you. :) I wouldn't be surprised if the dumb fraudster sends you a bogus bank draft.

[HRoth]

I am not going to sell him anything no matter what he uses to pay, although I don't think the bank draft would be bogus simply because the thing he wants to buy costs less than $10. My question is whether I should act on his admission in any way.

[Habtom]

The thing is there are so many people on the net trying to act smart. And you shouldn't have time for those people. Ignoring them could help us all.

[bird]

If you want "revenge", report him to his parents.

In south east asia, family values are generally held in very high esteem (even among "hiphop badasses", as you could see on his web site). His parents may not be very happy about their son getting a reputation as a fraudster. And since he's not married, he's most likely still living with them.

Of course, his parents may know next to nothing about computers and the internet, but if you're lucky you'll find a way to contact them anyway.

[zulufox]

I agree with bird, send his parents the email he sent you.

"Look what your son has been doing, doesn't your family have any honor?!?!?"

From my experience with Malaysians, touching upon someone's honor will always produce a response.

[CernyM]

Life's too short.

Ignore him.

[PCInk]

> I decided it would be worth it to pay for Authorize.net's Fraud Suite

He's cost you money.

Don't let him waste your time - ignore him.

[Habtom]

Being an ecommerce professional and compaining to a kid's parents :) What does it take for you to ignore him?

[Rugles]

I am with the "ignore him" crowd.

He has wasted more than enough of your time and money. Delete all further communication.

[kevinpate]

just an observation ...

When you sat down to start this thread, if you had
taken a step back and a deep breath after the second word of the title and then deleted and moved on, you'd be all the farther removed from any additional time/funds draining from your life. :)

[ritch_b]

Hell, I'm in dire need of a holiday; if you don't mind paying my flight & hotel bills, I'll gladly go over to Malaysia and have words with the pesky little critter. :)

Failing that, just ignore the idiot!

R.

[HRoth]

Well, I didn't think it was a waste of time to post about it because it was eating at me. I wish I were the kind of person who can just blow things off, but I'm not. I knew it would keep bothering me if I didn't "do" something like tell someone about it, and you folks are the only ones who would understand. So I am glad I spent the time to make the post.

But I think I am going to follow the advice of most folks here and ignore him. I did think about sending a letter to his father, but since the guy has been doing this for a couple years, he's probably been misbehaving in numerous ways. That means his father can't control him, so writing him wouldn't do any good, just make the father upset to no purpose.

Thanks, all.

[jsinger]

The guy probably has a bet going with his buds at the internet cafe that he can tell you he's a crook and still scam you out of a few bucks.

I know that sleazy telemarketers sometimes make bets with each other about how long they can keep a fish on the line. (I've played along once or twice. They hang up when you convince them that you're crazy!)

BTW, our firm hasn't answered an email from Nigeria, Indonesia, Malaysia etc in years. Spend your time helping the good customers.

[hfwd]

The guy probably has a bet going with his buds at the internet cafe that he can tell you he's a crook and still scam you out of a few bucks.

One of the most common scam is scamming victims of recent fraud by promising to help them "recover" the lost money - at a fee (upfront) of course!

[nzmatt]

He imagines himself to be a hiphop badass.

Love it - ha ha ha

Spend your time helping the good customers.

I agree.

There are plenty more like him, get used to it and ignore the little #*$!. Attention will feed his sad little fire, so withhold it!

[jsinger]

Yep, the names of serial scam victims are worth a fortune to con men. There is such thing as a born sucker apparently. I have no doubt that a microscopic number of people believe every email they get from Nigeria.

(I also know some otherwise sensible people who are sure they're going to win the Lottery any week now)

[RailMan]

>>I did think about sending a letter to his father

chances are the father wouldn't get the letter
chances are the website is fake too
ignore them and get on with dealing with real customers

[EstoreSeeker]

There are too many views about the topic, although they range only from "do something fruitfull about it" to "forget it for once and all".
and in my opinion it was necessary for this topic to be mentioned on the forum, as it concerns the whole community at one point of time or the other.
Besides that, it will be better to use your time and energy in your business rather than these petty things. But-Offcourse, must do something about it if its always repeating.
And its always good "if its a thief who wants to become a customer and not vice-versa."

ESS.

Ecommerce is better if it involves reliability!

[gamb]

Put a page up on a website somewhere and optimize it for his name. Put up the email he sent you.

[hunderdown]

... of course, it might not be his name, but the name of someone he dislikes.

[stubnolez]

Just screw with him, I mean don't tell me one so called HIPHOP bad ass is smarter than you..
Writing his parents who's to say that is not where he learned it from..
For 10 bucks tell him it costs 20 to ship it and 30 in taxes and another 40 in customer services fees..
You know just like a cell phone..
Post his website also

[hp11]

I would move on and disregard everything else. It's unfortunate, but fraud and headaches are part of business. It's how we deal with it that matters.