Credit card compromised

[Tomme boy]

Placed an order Monday at ballistic products over the net. Yesterday bank locks account for a $0.88 charge at a trailer sales place here in a small town. Never heard of this town before it is so small.

Anyway, this is the only place we have used the card in over a month. BP says they have not had any other reports of this happening. So we are on the way to the bank to pick up a new card. Everything is locked till we get the new card to link.

Anything else we should do?

 

[462]

I would talk to your bank's manager (not just a teller) to assure that you are not responsible for any and all fraudulent charges.

Two years ago, my debit card number was used to run up a $2500 charge at the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel.

 

[Rick]

Yep, banks don't want responsibility. Banker told me several years ago that the bank has no way to know you didn't run up the charge before changing cards/numbers and any charges made prior to the new card date would be honored. Why no I don't don't bank there any more.

 

[Charles Graff]

Frequently banks lock credit card accounts because some dufus keys in the wrong number at the "point of sale". It only takes one digit.

 

[462]

Addition to my above post:
I was not responsible for the $2500 charge.

 

[Tomme boy]

We got new cards this morning. Took about 2 hours to link all the accounts we have to the new card. The only thing charged was the $0.88 charge. Good thing is the old lady gets a message every time something is charged.

 

[porthos]

just got my new credit card 1 hr ago. that's the 3rd one since may. it never occured to me why, until i mentioned this issue on another site. MY COMPUTER. had it "cleaned" at Best Buy this week. i hope that solves the problem

 

[BBerguson]

Discover card has always been great for us. We’ve had our card compromised at least 5 times and they always taken good care of us and we haven’t ever had to pay for one of the fraud transactions.

 

[hporter]

I have never figured out the logic behind their processing and clearing of charges.

I had a $10,000 charge for industrial electrical parts placed on my personal credit card not too many years ago. Mind you, I rarely charge anything more than a couple hundred dollars per transaction month to month. And the bank approved and cleared that huge fraudulent charge.

Then the thief got greedy and a few hours later tried to run another charge in the amount of $15,000 on the same card for the same electrical supplier. That one triggered the bank to become suspicious and contact me.

I had done business with that electrical supplier 15 years before, through my employer and never with any personal details or credit. Probably spent the better part of a million dollars there. So I called my previous account manager who was still with the company. They could find no transactions in their books. So it must have been spoofed to look like them. I turned in a report to the Houston Police Department, but I doubt anything was ever done to look into it. That is probably why so much credit card fraud happens everyday. Easy to perpetrate, not much chance of getting caught.

 

[Petrol & Powder]

In reality, most white-collar crimes are easy to investigate and solve but extraordinarily difficult to prosecute. In simple terms, it’s easy to figure out WHAT happened but extremely difficult to prove WHO did it.

On top of that, the end results in terms of punishment are anti-climactic. White collar crimes are profitable for criminals because even if the criminal is successfully prosecuted (which is rare), the punishment is minimal. So, from the criminal’s point of view, there is high return and minimal risk.

White collar crimes are often described as “non-violent” crimes but if you are the one that lost the money, it matters little if the theft was accomplished by violent or non-violent means.

A thief is a thief and the method used to steal doesn’t change the fact that it is wrong to steal.

 

[Jeff H]

My card stopped being compromised regularly the instant I stopped using it for ANYTHING related to medical expenses.

EVERY time I used it for something related to the medical industry, BAM, I got hit again.

Hoe others are handling your personal information is a HUGE issue and it has been my experience that the most lax in that regard is hospitals, Dr.s offices, medical equipment suppliers. As an example, they are not even aware of the law. At least in my state, it is required to show a photo ID to verify that you are who you say you are. This is less about cutting the wrong guy's leg off than insurance companies worrying you will loan your car to your brother.

EVERY time I have been asked to show my ID, they insist I hand it to them. "No, you can identify me without touching my driver's license, and NO, you may NOT scan it." The answer is always the same - they don't even want to see it if they can't scan it and they only want to scan it so it's easier to sic bill collectors on you. And then they still provide the services without identifying you! EVERY time I get a pile of paperwork to sign they want me to sign saying I read and agree to their privacy policy, which they NEVER provide. When I bring that up, they can't even FIND their privacy policy.

One very large health insurance company lost control of my whole household's private information multiple times - that KNOW of.

YOU can do everything right, but so many people have access to your personal information and there are no real consequences to THEM if they lose control of it.

My wife's card was compromised ONCE. She and several other women tracked down some dirt-bag lawyer preying on women specifically and they actually got him prosecuted. If I ever get a divorce, I'll just have to sign everything over, change my name, get plastic surgery and move to Antarctica.

 

[CZ93X62]

Ah, credit/debit card fraud. What fun. Federal law changed the "Burden of proof" standard GREATLY in the late 1990s. Prior to those reforms, the victim was placed in the impossible position of proving that they DIDN'T run up the charges on a card or account. "Proving a negative" is a tall order for anyone, so victims got screwed in two directions--sometimes stuck with the pay-off, and almost always getting their credit rating trashed.

This was profoundly wrong, but that was the state of the law for may years in many states. Recognizing the inherent injustices, and seeing what obscene profits banks and credit card companies raked in, the game got changed by Congress to the present condition--where the burden of proof was on the bank/lender to prove fraud on the part of the account holder. THAT is very infrequent, in the real world--and now that most ATMs have camera capability (Mr. Laundrie learned this recently) it is a poor risk for perps regardless of status.

Banks hate this sitch, and they will not often cooperate with investigating agencies handling fraud cases. They are the victim of record--but they refuse to provide transaction records unless compelled to do so by search warrant or subpoena. That is known in some realms as a "Hostile witness", and if a victim doesn't want to be a victim......well, TAKE OFF, HOSER. So, losses mount up and fraudsters operate at low risk--because banks are vindictive, spiteful little pissants. They get their pound of flesh, though--interest rates on credit card balances are usurious, 20%-29% in most states. It is hard to feel sorry for banks as "victims", given their track record of customer goodwill.

Those ATM cameras are a godsend, though--and totally worth writing a search warrant to obtain the transaction pics. I closed SO MANY CASES related to misuse of credit/ATM cards stolen in auto theft, burglaries, robberies, and actual customer fraud with those pics.

 

[Petrol & Powder]

I will add that when the bank becomes the victim the level of their cooperation is often directly tied to the level of their loss. It is often cheaper for the banking institution to simply pay the loss than to pay the loss and pay yet more money to assist in the prosecution of the criminal. It isn’t that they are hostile to prosecution, it’s just a business decision to limit their loss. That being said, some banks are more friendly to law enforcement than others. One nationwide institution, that I will not name here, is notoriously hostile to law enforcement.

White collar crimes run the gamut from simple low level criminal actions by individuals to large, sophisticated schemes with multiple players and spread across several states or even countries. Like drug dealers, the big players are often insulated by the smaller players who don’t know their handlers.

Unfortunately, as pointed out, we ALL pay for this theft in the form of higher costs for goods and services, higher fees, higher interest, higher premiums, and other costs associated with theft.