I was just a victim of CC fraud - anyone else?

[simple girl]

I lost my credit card somehow...or someone stole it out of my purse Either way, I noticed it was gone the next day when I tried to buy groceries and couldn't find it. Called the CC company right away and there was already like $1000+ charges on it. Yikes. I was not held responsible for any of it at all since I had reported it right away.

[JohnDoe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fireup2025 Oh, a notice to the credit bureaus was generated by Chase also. My other accounts all still have zero balances. Whew! (first thing I checked when I got home, so it was the card number itself, not "my" identity" After these stories, I am even more happy with Chase - these charges just occurred in the last 3 days!

Chase is on the ball with this. They helped me after a trip to WDW recently. Someone got my number and charged a few G's in california.

As far as your CR, I would check back frequently. Sometimes it takes a while for identity theft to show up.

[FinanceDude]

Someone did that to me with my Capital One card 3 years ago. Capital One's fraud area was a joke. They notified me AFTER Nordstrom Department Stores had contacted them to question the purchase online of a large item that was $900.

Within less than 24 hours, over $10500 was charged fraudelently. The WHOLE TIME Capital One kept telling me how "lucky" I was that they paid the $50 fee for me on the fraudulen t charges.

I kept reminding them that THEY were NOT the ones to notice suspicious activity on my account, and how MUCH I wished Nordstrom was a major CC company.....................

[John Tuttle]

Two stories. I got a call at work asking me if I had bought a used car with one of those cash advance credit card checks. The total was over $3,000.00. I assured her that I had never used one of those checks, and how did I know she was legit. I got her name, called the credit card company and got things cleared up. Somebody had stolen the checks out of our mailbox and bought a used car with them. Never heard any more about it. It was then I learned I could stop them from sending me those checks.

Second story. I got a phone call from the credit card company asking me to verify some purchases. I bought 2 gallons of gas for my lawn mower then filled up my truck with gas on my credit card. My wife charged a large item (dishwasher I believe) and their computer kicked this out. Very nice woman on the phone. I assured her they were all legit and asked what had kicked them out. She said probably the small gas purchase followed by the large purchase. Thieves buy a gallon or two of gas at the pump to make sure the card hasn't been reported and then buy something large.

[TromboneAl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bbbamI A little over a year ago, I noticed a couple of charges on my VISA statement that I knew I did not initiate. I searched the vendor on the internet and found out that they had charged several $100k worth of fraudulent fees to thousands of VISA credit card holders. There were 2 charges, seems like they were $ 9.95 and $29.95. I called VISA about it and the rep I talked to had no idea what I was talking about! I read him the article from the internet. Had to sign a form regarding fraud, closed the account and opened a new one. There's no telling how many people just ignored these amounts since they were so small.

Yes, I went through something like this. I found literally hundreds of people on newsgroups who had had charges from exactly the same company, yet the credit card company said they knew nothing about it.

[bbbamI]

The cc company had to know. Since the amounts were so small, I don't think they wanted to deal with it, but had to when the customer complained.

Another reason to check the statements line by line.

[bssc]

Two comments

I don't use my debit card for anything but taking cash out of ATMs.

If you are travelling, you can call your credit card company and place a note on your account to let them know that there will be out of area charges.

[audreyh1]

Yes, I had almost the exact same scenario last summer, with Bank of America. The fraud department called me that afternoon. I called back, but got suspicious with a couple of personal ID questions, so I called the number on the card, and eventually got back to the same department and the same questions!

They were able to verify which charges were valid that day. The rest were on-line charges coming out of Europe as far as I could understand. How my CC number got into someone else's hands - I have no idea.

I couldn't believe how quickly they caught it and shut down my card!

We were traveling (as usual), so I had to wait until we got near a city for a couple of days, at which time I arranged to have replacement cards overnighted to a local branch of Bank of America.

All this required lots of verification! But otherwise it wasn't too bad.

It did cause a hassle with some recurring charges! After that I switched the recurring charges to a different credit card which I use for no other purpose.

Oh - and I never saw any of the bogus charges.

Audrey

[chinaco]

I had a fraudulent charege on a card about 10 years ago for about $5000. Its a long story... But I rarely used the card (few times). The Fraud occurred right after I closed the account but before the system closed it out. THe Banks Fraud dept caught it. I always will believe someone at the bank sold the card number. The charge was made in Saudi Arabia. I have never been there.


On the same note did you hear about TJX. It is the parent company of TJMAXX, Marshals, Homegoods and several other retail cahin stores. They had a data breash and millions of credit and debit card numbers were stolen. There was on article in the press that indicated that there were as many as 40mm card numbers. Anyway, my wife shops at one of the store. Our credit card company contacted us and suggested that we shut down the account and open a new one... We did.

I have been notified 3 times over the last 3 years that data has been stolen. I finally put a rider on my home owners policy for identity theft. It cost about $20/yr. It will pay up to $15k to help me undo the damage if Identity theft ever occurs. It is my understanding that (depending on how bad it is) you will need to hire special services and maybe a lawyer to clean up your credit record.

[Life_is_Good]

A few summers ago a scam was setup at our neighborhood GAS STATION. Some technology was put into place to capture the card information as it was slid through the scanners next to the pumps. We only found one fraudulant charge under $500 when we had our bank cancel the cards. We found out the details when the story posted to the local newspaper a few months later.

[mh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DangerMouse I also have to give kudos to Chase for their efforts to avoid fraud. My DH was recently in France, as it was outside our normal spending pattern they did call to check we had authorised the expenditure. I was most impressed by their efforts. Fortunatley for us, it was not fraud, just my husband spending.

Don't be *too* impressed, it's their own interests that they have foremost
in mind when fraud monitoring like this.

[teejayevans]

I purchase music online at Walmart, few months later I got a charge for
$400 from a Walmart in Ohio, call up Discover card and had it taken care
of, when I went back to the walmart online music store, lo and behold they
still have my credit card info!! You can protect you CC all you want, but
when stores save the information, its like a candy store to hackers and
crooked employees. Needless to say, I don't buy online from Walmart
anymore.
Tom

[OkieTexan]

Several years ago I had a $9000 debacle with CC fraud on a VISA card. I contacted the fraud division. All the verifications were made. I was told I was not liable for the charge. A new account was opened. I was told to destroy the old cards, etc. I thought I was in the clear with a new card.

However, the idiots moved the $9000 charge, with late charges over to the new account! It took weeks, talking to managers and supervisors all over the country to get it resolved. One creep even told me I had to pay the $9K..........

I just kept asking to "talk to your boss" until I got someone to help me.
I am glad to hear that most of you are getting better results these days!

[MikeD]

The only fraud we ever had was on a phone company calling card in Louisvilee, KY in '91. I only used the card once ever in a Red Roof Inn from my room phone. A few weeks later we had thousands of dollars of charges from Naval bases all over the world. At times there were over 10 calls being made at the same time globally. The phone company accused us of making the calls. We finally had to dispute every call in writing to get them dropped. We changed phone companies.

I also had a Christian business man (he had one of the fish in his ad. This is not why we picked him)charge us a deposit for some HVAC work and never show and then not take the charges back. My wife, who used to check the CC bills at the time, didn't notice for 60 days and the CC company wouldn't take them back. We called the sherrif and he knew the guy so he sent the county district attourney over to have a talk with him. Two weeks later: a credit!

We are much more careful now. I check the bank and the credit card every day.

Mike D.

[JustCurious]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeD We are much more careful now. I check the bank and the credit card every day.

You are obviously retired.

[teejayevans]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustCurious You are obviously retired.

Discover card has notification system, you give them a limit and they will send you a
email whenever a charge is posted exceeding that limit, I'm sure other CCs have a
similar function. So you can set the limit to $200 to avoid getting emails for every
charge.
Tom

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustCurious You are obviously retired.

I'm not retired, and work hard. Like JustCurious, I like to keep an eye on things. I check my bank, 401K, and Roth every morning so that I know what I am working for. You can do that online these days which makes it lots easier. With the Links bar it hardly takes a minute.

As for the question - - I don't have a credit card and don't want one due to my devotion to my LBYM lifestyle. But, I have a debit card that I use to buy gas, and someone charged a Dell laptop to it back in 2000. This was before my bank had e-banking but Dell sent me a snail mail confirming that this purchase had been made with my card. Dell had sent the laptop to a person with a neareastern name living in San Jose. I had never been there, and did not know the person.

So, I went to my bank, and they gave me the money back immediately - - temporarily, at first, and then permanently after a couple of months when their investigation was complete. It was the entire amount, with no $50 subtracted. I think my bank responded wonderfully and better than I would have expected.

[yelnad]

My husband's Discover card was used at a Lowe's in Brooklyn last week for $2200. It was also used at gas stations and grocery stores in the PA/NY area. Discover took care of it right away.

[bright eyed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CompoundInterestFan This is why I don't use debit cards. If someone steals my CC number (which they have), no big deal. If the CC company doesn't call me right away, I'll catch it when I review the monthly statement. The bottom line is they don't get any of my money for anything that I didn't charge. But with debit cards, the thief has direct access to my money. I can catch it later, but undoing the damage is much more difficult.

Me too - My debit card was used once for a $200 transaction i didn't make and i immediately called the bank (bofa) and they gave me a little runaround - and even tried to deny my claim - but i was very persistant and they put the $ back...this was when they first started their commercials about "if something happens, money goes back into your account that day" - i was like, "hello?" so it took a while but I was pissed off and scared off from trusting their security. i don't use the card at all now.

i think someone had a device to track acct '#'s off of those non-bank atm machines, because they obviously had my pin # too. scary!

[eridanus]

The "$50 maximum" federal law does not protect debit cards. It only applies to credit cards, though the bank itself may extend the protection.