Posted on 11/25/2014 6:43:48 AM PST by sodpoodle
BE ON THE ALERT, THE HOLIDAY SEASON IS COMING NEW SCAM
Just when you think you've heard it all. Here comes another scam. This scam is very clever. Be very careful out there! One could easily fall for this -
beware of people bearing gifts!
There is a new and clever credit card scam. Please circulate this. Someone it happened to says it works like this:
Wednesday a week ago, I had a phone call from someone who said that he was from some outfit called: "Express Couriers" asking if I was going to be home because there was a package for me, and the caller said that the delivery would arrive at my home in roughly an hour. And sure enough, about an hour later, a uniformed delivery man turned up with a beautiful basket of flowers and wine. I was very surprised since it did not involve any special occasion or holiday, and I certainly didn't expect anything like it. Intrigued about who would send me such a gift, I inquired as to who the sender is. The delivery man's reply was, he was only delivering the gift package, but allegedly a card was being sent separately; (the card has never arrived!). There was also a consignment note with the gift
. He then went on to explain that because the gift contained alcohol, there was a $3.50 "delivery charge" as proof that he had actually delivered the package to an adult, and not just left it on the doorstep where it could be stolen or taken by anyone.
This sounded logical and I offered to pay him cash. He then said that the company required the payment to be by credit or debit card only so that Everything is properly accounted for.
My husband, who by this time was standing beside me, pulled his wallet out of his pocket with the credit/debit card, and 'John', the "delivery man", asked my husband to swipe the card on the small mobile card machine which had a small screen and keypad where Frank was also asked to enter the card's PIN and security number. A receipt was printed out and given to us.
To our horrible surprise, between Thursday and the following Monday, $4,000 had been charged/withdrawn from our credit/debit account at various ATM machines. It appeared that somehow the "mobile credit card machine" which the delivery man carried now had all the info necessary to create a "dummy" card with all our card details after my husband swiped our card and entered the requested PIN and security number.
Upon finding out about the illegal transactions on our card, we immediately notified the bank which issued us the card, and our credit/debit account was closed. We also personally went to the Police, where it was confirmed that it is definitely a scam because several households had been similarly hit.
WARNING: Be wary of accepting any "surprise gift or package", which you neither expected nor personally ordered, especially if it involves any kind of payment as a condition of receiving the gift or package. Also, never accept anything if you do not personally know or there is no proper identification of who the sender is.
Above all, the only time you should give out any personal credit/debit card information is when you yourself initiated the purchase or transaction!
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They should have told the delivery guy they didn’t have a credit card, and then slammed the door in his face.
Doh!
I haven’t received any phone calls, but I have received several emails to that effect.
So, beware of emails with the same message - “your package” and of course a lot of us use the internet to shop .. so the msg doesn’t seem to be that far off.
HOWEVER, I don’t know what happens if you answer the email .. I knew it was a SCAM so I just sent it to JUNK MAIL.
Beware of free gifts requiring a credit charge.
‘How about this 1911 in .45 caliber, is that enough to get you gone?’
(Maybe he will leave fast enough to forget the basket.)
So sorry this happened to you, sodpoodle. I have to admit that if I visibly saw a beautiful flower arrangement with wine.. I’d be fooled as well. It’s one thing to get an email or a phone call. I think we are more likely to automatically think “scam”. However, to see the gift removes a lot of that initial training. Thank you so much for the details of the scam. You may have helped a lot of freepers out!
Eeks.. just saw it was an email from a friend and not you. Doesn’t matter.. thank you.
This is where proper utilization of capital punishment could really come in handy.
It’s debatable whether executions really act as a deterrent for crimes of passion, but I’m certain that after the 2nd or 3rd public hanging of one of these “delivery men” and their phone handlers there would be a lot less of this sort of thing going on.
Clever scam. Thanks for the heads up.
The something for nothing Scam. Works every time if you are not careful. Trust in the Lord is the only way.
BTTT
It still boggles my mind that people don’t understand that a PIN is a PERSONAL identification number. It’s not meant to be shared, yet people willingly give it up without a thought.
I’ve taken to cutting out the CVV2 number on my cards with a razor knife. This leaves a nice hole in my card. Despite some strange looks, no one ever gives me a hard time about it. The CVV2 number was implemented to safeguard people with online purchases, but it’s been used recently by scammers who skim card numbers at restaurants and other point-of-sale businesses and write down or key in the CVV2 number which is later used to purchase Bitcoins online. Those transactions are hard to trace which makes for a nice little money laundering operation.
If you value your privacy, don’t tell anyone your PIN and cut out your CVV2 code from your card after committing it to memory. (It’s a three-digit number for goodness sake!) Only the most sophisticated criminal operations can duplicate plastic cards with working magnetic strips. Most illegal transactions are done online these days.
Maybe one possibility (if something like this happens to me in the future) is to ask for the name of the company to check who the sender was.
Sodpoodle,
Did this happened to you personally and just this last week?
I always carry a debit card with $25.00 on it, the most I could ever lose in a scam is that $25....so far haven’t !!
ping
Thanks for the information. I always make sure I inform my dad of any new scams floating around. He’s had folks call and try to scam his credit card info over the phone...and being elderly (88) the phone scammers try to confuse, then elicit the number. He’s done well in paying attention. I just called him about this scam.
I work for an online retailer and there are so many “customers” trying to use stolen cc info, it’s really mushroomed in recent years due to all the data that’s been stolen and breaches at the big retailers.
You will not be charged for fraud on your card,if you contact the credit card company in a reasonable amount of time, (it’s the retailer that allowed the card to be used for a purchase who “eats” the charge.)
Many credit card companies can recognize fraudulent charges and will shut your cc down until they can contact you and confirm the charges. In fact, if you’re going to make a large purchase, outside your “normal” buying habits, it’s always a good idea to let your credit card company know...or your next attempted purchase with that card may be declined because the card company is trying to contact you to confirm the unusual purchase.
My company is just super cautious about anything that the payment gateway flags as suspicious and of different bill to ship to orders that are large and easily resold. Those are tricky because they are not flagged by the payment gateway because all the stolen cc info is correct. We verify, verify, verify on the front end of a purchase.
We find our customers have no problem helping us confirm a
purchase because they know we’re just safeguarding cc info.
I do not worry too much about cc fraud on my own cards. Each time there has been fraud, my cc company has notified us...and reissued a different card.
Identity theft worries me, as it is not as easily detected early on. One of the better ways of protecting from identity theft is not by securing your Social Security number...think about it, the whole world has your SS number...well maybe not the “whole” world, but your doctor’s office, their employees, practically every form you’ve ever filled out at a bank, etc. etc.
Putting a lock/freeze on your credit reports is a much better way. If you have a lock on your credit scores, then no one will be able to apply for a loan, credit card, mortgage without running a credit report...and with a lock on the report, that will stop the fraudster in his/her tracks if they’re trying to steal your identify for monetary gain. If you’re going to need a credit report for a legitimate transaction, you can temporarily lift the freeze.
Just my 2 cents.
Fortunately this did not happen to me. A dear friend sent me an email warning. Glad he did - I would have probably fallen for the scam - i.e. getting a gift for a small charge and the ‘alcohol delivery to an adult’ is a clever ruse.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone;)
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