need advice on ship-to Nigeria

looks like fraud but not sure

[Christi]

We got two orders in this morning--I haven't processed them yet--with bill-to in the UK (where we often ship) and ship-to in Nigeria. Smells like a rat to me. AVS=N. On the other hand, I'd be willing to ship to the UK if I could confirm by e-mail and get the correct billing address with the "customer."

I dunno. Should I just void these and e-mail the purchaser to say we won't ship to Nigeria (even though the site says "We ship worldwide"--kinda).

Thanks for any advice!

Christi

[Morocco]

I've gone through all of these posts. You should all look into the 3d Secure programs. They are the cheapest and by far the most concrete forms of fraud protection available for an online merchant. This shouldn't be an issue.

All a card has to do is pass AVS and it can't be chargedback for the reasons you guys are describing. This means if I have an order and its billing address is in the US...and it passes AVS...I can ship that wherever I want. The Issuing Bank must assume the responsibility for the chargeback. If they (issuing bank)authorize it, they eat the chargeback.

[Christi]

Morocco, the problem is, not all (legitimate) non-U.S. banks support AVS. One thing that distinguishes us is that we are willing to ship outside the U.S. That said, we do take precautions, watch the AVS codes, and will in a heartbeat e-mail to "confirm" some aspect or another. Maybe we've just been lucky, but I do think the personal attention and "eye" have helped us avoid chargebacks and other b.s. like this Nigeria issue.

My 2c.

Christi

[kjbrown]

People send me Nigerian scams all the time to buy my cotton wearable widgets. I also get the "I have 40mil in a bank account". When I get an order from someone in nigeria I send them the "I have $40million" spam mail from some other nigerian scammer, and when I get the 40mil in a bank account email I send them "Please accept my order for 9,000 of your product" email. I'm sure it's not the same exact scammers getting each others emails. But at least I think it's funny. Too much work? Eh... business is slow.

[sambqt]

I've had two Nigerian orders so far this year. Both had shipping addresses in Lagos Lagos, Puerto Rico. AVS came up bad on both, so I called my merchant account provider for issuing bank phone #'s to verify cardholder name, etc.. I can't believe how little help my bank is with fraudulent orders. They gave me the customer service #'s for the issuing banks (the number for the cardholder). It's nearly impossible to talk to a human being when calling them if you are not the cardholder. I decided to press 0 at every prompt and after about 7-8 minutes I was put on hold to talk to a human.

The cardholders' banks were grateful that I reported the stolen credit cards and a little amazed that I took the time to do it. I've offered to send an empty package to help them arrest the theives, but they seem to have little interest in doing this. No wonder credit card fraud is so prevalent and easy to get away with. We as merchants are the ones who end up paying with the lost products chargebacks and fees. The banks don't seem to care much about solving the problem since it doesn't really cost them anything.

A friend of mine who is in direct sales (cosmetics) experienced a Nigerian scam right before Christmas. The scammer used the TDD phone system (for hearing-impaired) to call her and ordered $14,000 worth of cologne to be express shipped to Ghana. He was adamant that it be sent immediately. The credit card billing address was a non-existent street in a misspelled town in Delaware. She asked the operator where the call originated and was told that they cannot reveal that information. She later received an email from the operator (she had given the supposedly hearing-impaired caller her email address) saying that the call originated from Nigeria and the same person had attempted to scam several other US merchants out of laptops and other electronic equipment using the TDD phone system. The operator also said he could lose his job for informing her. I think he deserves a raise.

[Rossv1]

She later received an email from the operator (she had given the supposedly hearing-impaired caller her email address) saying that the call originated from Nigeria and the same person had attempted to scam several other US merchants out of laptops and other electronic equipment using the TDD phone system. The operator also said he could lose his job for informing her.

Search Google for 'Nigerian Scams using IP Relay' and you'll find an anonymous message board run by some IP Relay phone operators regarding this issue. Also, a news search will return a few news articles from this past wek regarding this issue. We get about one of these per week, we don't accept TDD relay orders anymore.

[edited by: Rossv1 at 6:52 pm (utc) on April 17, 2004]

[derekwong28]

In our line of business which sells high-risk electronic items. Vietnam has now overtaken Nigeria and Indonesia as by far the greatest source of attempted fraud.