streetsmoker

Hey, have I got story for you guys!!!!!! But sadly not a good one


Boy howdy, when it rains, it sure does pour!!!! Found out yesterday after my debit card was denied at the filling station for $50 worth of #2 that some lame freakin' yahoo somehow got ahold of my card # and ran up $1300+ worth of charges, and overdrew the account by $450. Someone in Cali. flying to and staying in Mexico at a real nice hotel booked on Priceline.

Lukily the bank manager says I should get all of it back, however I had to cancell the current account, and open a new one. Which sucks bad cause now I have to resubmit all my direct drafts and deposits. Tomorrow I also have to call the credit bureaus and get them to flag my name for possible fraud. Hoping against everything that all they got was the card# and no other personal stuff.

I really don't know how or when they could have gotten ahold of my card# I never answer to any emails if I don't know the sender. Don't bank online, don't store any banking info on my computer. Really could have happened anytime with all the hackers. But I hazard a guess someone compromised one of the E-stores where I have made purchases online. My guess is Cheap Tickets, as many of the charges were bought on travel sites.

I don't doubt if on a few weeks you hear about a huge security hack into a big online store, kinda like with what happened at AOL a while back and a few others.

JPR Ram

My checking account was cleaned out not once, but twice!!!! I know DO NOT use paper checks anymore except to family members. I've been using the same book now for the past year and a half.

BigBlue

Had mine stolen through pay pal. Took all of my spring break money away last year. Had to cancel the card and the accounts and get new stuff sent and opended up, had to borrow money from the parents, etc. Took me over a year to finally get it all figured out and that was just a debit card. Luckily I caught the guy before he did to much damage and only managed to purchase a gold nokia cell phone on ebay. I'll say this though, that guy was awfully mad when he went to use my card again and it got denied. He tried arguing with pay pal saying that it was a legit purchase and blah blah blah. Funny thing though is that somehow I managed to be the seller of the item and I bought it with my own debit card but wanted it shipped to london.

Dodgezilla

I had someone get ahold of one of my cards and spend $10,000 out in California a few years back. The strange thing was that this person was shopping and going to restaurants and paying by just giving the number out. Sometimes they take your number and make a fake card but since this person didn't, and all the establishments kept accepting it, I was not held liable for any of the charges.
The lady that works for me had applied for a new card. Someone got ahold of it in the mail and went on a trip to Europe. They racked up over $50,000 and the CC company could not stop them because there were still so many places in Europe that were not automated and all these businesses kept running manual transactions.....
I still haven't learned my lesson though and have a couple cards that I use....

streetsmoker

Yeh BigBlue, thats the other place I think it may have been lifted from. Although no purchases have showed up from Ebay or any site that uses Paypal. There also was one charge not online at a Flying J in California, which makes us think the card# was cloned onto another card.

All this makes me want to go back to cash only transactions!!!!!

BigBlue

That's what I've gone to is cash only. Only thing I use checks for is bills.

chaikwa

My best friend's ex-business partner has done stuff like this... a LOT of stuff! He had access to my friend's private info; SS number, date of birth, etc. So, he didn't bother stealing a credit card number, he just opened up accounts in my friends name! LOTS of accounts! Bought a truck too. And a house. What REALLY messed things up was that he paid for all this stuff for almost a year, so it all looked lgeitimate. Once he stopped payin' tho, WOW, what a mess. This happened about 6 years ago, and my friend is still in the process of getting it all straightened out. I WILL say however, that once the State Police got involved, the creditors had a higher level of understanding and were more willing to listen!

chaikwa.

Geico266

I got a call from Visa asking if I was buying $1,500 worth of rap crap CD's from Capital Records On Line. lol Yea, right, like that would happen. The charge was denighed.

Then about a month later I got a call from Visa asking if I was renting a backhoe in South Carolina for $12,000. I told them I would rent one locally.

chaikwa

You mean they don't KNOW that lizards or cavemen can't run backhoe's? Hmmm, a caveman listening to rap tho... that could be entertainin'!

chaikwa.

streetsmoker

Ok guys, got an update. Still haven't got my money refunded yet, but they did narrow down where and how the card# was stolen. Seems I was a victim of magnetic card skimming from an ATM. The crooks place an unnoticeable magnetic card reader in the ATM slot and record all cards that have been swiped. Then sell the #'s. Good thing is that was all they could have gotten and no other personal info.

In a small way, makes me feel better about how carefull I am about shopping online and such. Seems that as we becom hyper aware of the high-tech ways of stealing identities, we open ourselfs to the old-school ways of theft.

HappyGA

same thing happened to me. I got a call from my bank asking if I bought $700 from tiffany and Co. in NY and also if I bought $700 worth of stuff onlline at some place in china. I said no, and it took about 2 weeks for the money to be put back in my account. I had to wait for the charges to clear before filing a report on them. Then after I filed the dispute, they put my money back..

They caught the people that did it. I went and purchased a circle track asphalt car, but while in the neighboring state, I had to fuel up. People running the register turned their back to me to run my card, while it was processing, they wrote down my number, and pass key from the back, and then made online purchases like it was a crcedit card instead of a debit. I watch people like a hawk now when they take my card somewhere else to scan it.

belfert

Someone bought a Lincoln Navigator in my name once. They applied and got an auto loan using my name and SSN. They used my DL # also. The auto dealer was stupid enough to accept one of those paper temporary driver's licenses. They never asked for any photo ID I guess.

The loan was through Wells Fargo and they took care of the whole thing. The thief crashed the Navigator so Wells Fargo took a beating if they ever got the car back.

I was mailed a ticket for no insurance for the thief's accident, but was able to get it cleared up when I took all the documentation down to the courthouse.

No idea how they got my info, but no issues in the last six years.

Brian Elfert

RoadDiesel

anyone use paypal..? I now avoid using it.. check out this site.

http://www.paypalsucks.com/

and click to the right side. Click under forums and read a few "Horror" stories....lol

belfert

Did you notice that website is sponsored by a company that is try to sell credit card processing services? Their ad is on at least one message in every thread on the forum.

I looked at the threads and at least 1/3 or them are about Paypal limiting accounts, not actual fraud. Did you think anyone with success with Paypal is going to go to this site?

Every method of payment has risk of some sort. I don't believe Paypal is any better or worse than any other method.

Brian Elfert

RoadDiesel

a good friend of mine is a police officer..had his paypal account broken into and charged almost $15,000.00... He had a hard time with paypal for a long time..gave him the run around..so yes I have seen it frist hand..