[John Robertson]

Got a notice of Insufficient Funds yesterday on my PNC Bank account here in Pittsburgh, and the expected bank charge. Went to branch to inquire about it, and was given a printout of recent activity. On September 21, an outfit called "NET ANGELS" debited my account for $180.93, enough to tip me into insufficiency. I used ALL CAPS because that's the way it came out on the bank's printout. Also in all caps was this: WWW.NETANGE GB, the last of which may stand for Great Britain.

I cancelled the card (but not the account, which I use for my small business), the bank is sending me a protest form, and they have also flagged the account not to accept any more debits from this source.

I have never heard of this outfit. I went through two years of check registry, and cannot find anything I bought from any company with a name like this (under the theory that some shady operator tried to hit my account again, for the heck of it).

You can't Google it, and trying the URL is no help at all. Anyone have any ideas? I do so much stuff online that I am completely lost. Could it be some domain registry company? My wife says it sounds like it might be a porn site; maybe it does, but I admit to nothing! Seriously, I need to get to the bottom of this, and would appreciate any and all ideas/suggestions. Thanks, Freepers.

[freedumb2003]

CALL YOUR BANK NOW AND DISPUTE THE CHARGES

Then we can figure out what happened.

[freedumb2003]

Check this site for some hints on Netangels and hacking

http://www.techwarelabs.com/community/viewtopic.php?p=22489

[Tribune7]

Call your bank, explain what happened. If it looks like a crime report it to police/feds.

[Lazamataz]

They just messed with the wrong guy.

Why do I think their website is likely to be crashing a lot?

;^)

[Lazamataz]

My wife says it sounds like it might be a porn site; maybe it does, but I admit to nothing!

(drumming fingers, pretending I believe you)

[BlessedBeGod]

FYI, the URL ending ".GB" does indeed stand for Great Britain.

[sinkspur]

I do so much stuff online that I am completely lost.

Do you have a firewall, like Zone Alarm?

The web is loaded with spyware, and every web site you hit leaves a cookie that enables somebody to come back into your system.

Exactly what happened to you happened to me a year ago. I installed Zone Alarm Pro and have never had a problem since. It will keep out whatever you want it to keep out.

Oh, and buy the professional version. The gimme version is worthless.

There are other firewalls out there, so wait for comments from other posters.

[al_again]

I won't go into the details of how it all works, but the name on the statement is meaningless. This works o\by way of what's known as an ACH transaction - electronic debit. Part of this ACH transaction contains a name which can be ANYTHING. The meaningful part is the bank routing number and account number which is where your money ended up.

I'm not sure if the bank will provide you the info to find out who this is. You need the routing number to determine the name of the bank and then you would need to contact that bank to be able to get the name of the account holder - something they definitely won't provide to you.

You need to hassle your bank with dispute forms and follow-ups. They are required by law to make those funds available after 10 business days until they complete their investigation. Keep hassling them, they will end up eating the 180 as it will be two expensive for them to try and track down the real criminals.

[FormerACLUmember]

My 90 year old dad had $45,000 recently wired out of his account (in $1000 increments) to India in an identity theft. Cause: the bank was outsourcing back office paperwork to India.

We had to get a lawyer to get the bank to honor federal law and eventually (and with great resisitance) return all the money. This was a federal credit union for retired teachers in Florida.

[finallyatexan]

I know this doesn't help you now but Everyone who orders online should always set up a seperate account for this purpose. Only keep a couple hundred dollars in it and use it only to order online.
Someone got ahold of my checking info and bought CDs from Columbia House. It took forever to straighten it out.

[Lazamataz]

Aw hell. I just noticed: Wrong John.

John Robinson, you oughtta set this guy's screen name in a different color so I can tells ya apart. :o)

[al_again]

One more thing, CLOSE THE ACCOUNT! This type of fraud can be based on account number. If they have that, they can keep doing this over and over. I'm surprised your bank didn't force you to do this.

[TomGuy]

A few years ago, an charge to an ISP in Russia showed up on my credit card. It was only around $15.00 but it wasn't mine. I filed a protest with the card and they credited the amount back to my account. They did delete my old card (to avoid any future charges) and re-issue me a new card with a different number.

Just recently I had a double transaction show up for an Internet purchase. For some reason, the same transaction number showed up twice, thus double billing my card. I notified the card co. They discredited both charges and told me they would wait until the charge came through again. It did, single billing, so I paid it. No further double billings have shown up on that card. It must have been a software error for it to have the same transaction number.

With Internet, you can check most accounts almost immediately. I can use my card at Walmart, for example, and the charge shows up on my cc account by the time I get home and log into the account.

[Musket]

Ummm. lemme guess. You're using MicroSoft Internet Explorer and NO firewall software. Am I right?

[Drammach]

Couple of possibilities..

Google search for Netangels came up with several sites, both uk, au, nz..
Also, an article about company called "firefly" that bought an information gathering system called "netangels"...
Firefly uses such info to configure ads for such companies as YAHOO..

If you search for 2 words, i.e., "net angels", you get tons of hits, due to the seperate "angels" in the search parameters.. just too much to browse through..

[Fzob]

Look up stuff here

http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/index.jhtml



netangel.com

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Moniker.com Whois Server Version 2.0

The Data in Moniker.com's WHOIS database
is provided for information purposes only, and is
designed to assist persons in obtaining information
related to domain name registration records.
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to: (1) allow, enable, or otherwise support the
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this query, you agree to abide by this policy.

Domain Name: NETANGEL.COM

Registrant:
Ultimate Search
GPO Box 7862
Hong Kong
HK
CN
0000

Administrative Contact:
Support, DNS (NIC-2415) dns@ultsearch.com
Ultimate Search
GPO Box 7862
Central
Central, HK
0000
Phone: 25379677

Billing Contact:
Support, DNS (NIC-2415) dns@ultsearch.com
Ultimate Search
GPO Box 7862
Central
Central, HK
0000
Phone: 25379677

Technical Contact:
Support, DNS (NIC-2415) dns@ultsearch.com
Ultimate Search
GPO Box 7862
Central
Central, HK
0000
Phone: 25379677

Domain servers in listed order:

NS1.ULTSEARCH.COM
NS2.ULTSEARCH.COM

Record created on 2002-12-10 15:38:00.0
Database last updated on 2003-02-11 22:51:00.0
Domain Expires on 2004-12-10 15:38:00.0



The previous information has been obtained either directly from the registrant or a registrar of the domain name other than Network Solutions. Network Solutions, therefore, does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.

Show underlying registry data for this record



Current Registrar: MONIKER ONLINE SERVICES, INC.
IP Address: 66.216.74.58 (ARIN & RIPE IP search)
IP Location: US(UNITED STATES)
Record Type: Domain Name
Server Type: Indeterminate
Lock Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
DMOZ no listings
Y! Directory: see listings
Secure: No
E-commerce: No
Traffic Ranking: 5
Data as of: 08-Jun-2004

[OldCorps]

bump

[Cicero]

As a rule, a criminal withdrawal from your credit card account can be reversed if you call the company, and they will take care of going after the perp. But a criminal withdrawal from a debit card or a bank account won't be repaid in the same way. You have to try to collect from the criminal yourself, which is pretty much a losing game.

Debit cards and on-line payments are somewhat dangerous for that reason. A credit card is much safer.

But it certainly won't hurt to try.

[FairOpinion]

Ask your bank, maybe they have a phone number for the outfit that charged you and you can call them.

I recently had an experience, where a charge showed up on my credit card, that I didn't make. I called the credit card company, who gave me the phone number of the outfit and suggested that I give them a call, to see what they say. I called them and asked them how they got my credit card number. They told me that apparently, when I purchased something totally unrelated online, (they had the exact merchant and date), I must have clicked on some "take $10 off on your next purchase" coupon out of curiousity, which triggered a "subscription" to this other service, and they promptly charged my card. But when I called them, they did reverse the charges immediately.

It may be worth your while to call them, to find out, if perhaps something similar happened to you, or did someone else use your card, or is the outfit itself engaged in fraudulent charging.

[codercpc]

Also look for small amounts within the past few weeks for probably under $5.00

This happened to me about 2 years ago, only we were charged almost $5,000.00 over a two day period. It was a company out of Germany (a sound system company), and when we looked at activity on our account for the week prior, we discovered two small amounts, one for a Save the Children's sort of fund also ending in those GB letters (?Great Britain) and another for a PETA like group out of Germany. The bank figured that they had used the account # the first two times (both under $5.00) to verify that it was an active account, but a small enough amount that it went unnoticed by us.

We were reimbursed through our credit unions for the complete amount in the end, but I basically had a wiped out checking account for almost 2 weeks. My bank did hold all checks for us, and didn't "bounce" any while they were investigating, but we did go through the whole nine yards, police reports, etc.

The only complaint I had was that my credit unions "investigation", was only investigating us to make sure we weren't screwing them, and although they had the tracking info on the company that made the charge, they never even tried contacting them. I took it upon myself to look at the internet where I found a company in Germany that seemed to fit, I emailed the owner explaining the whole thing, hoping someone there spoke English. They emailed me back telling me that the people that had ordered the equipment (some sort of sound equipment for recording) had listed my husband and about twelve others as co-owners in the company. It was somewhere in Turkey. Thankfully, I got ahold of the guy before any equipment was sent, and he canceled the order. He re-wired the money back to my account and all was well.

I now watch my account like a hawk. I have also stopped using my check card for internet purchases.