debit card theft

Well, it's been an interesting day. Got an e-mail from BoA saying there was unusual activity on my business account. I checked on line- yup. After freaking out that some bastard in Great Britain had run up 3341.64 in charges, for food and audio/ video equipment, I contacted the bank, and all will be taken care of. I buy a lot of equipment over the phone on my card, the possibility of somebody I trust has compromised my number is quite real. I sure don't like it, though. Apparently the bank does not want me to nose around too much about who the perp was, but I will. Had the same thing happen last year, when somebody bought an airline ticket from Italy to Canada for 800.00. All taken care of, but still, hassle. Sorry, just had to vent.

Lynch the crook. I have had this happen as well. It is rather annoying.

I hope he bought GOOD stereo at least. My mom had that happen to her a number of years ago, and some goober in CA bought like 3 grand worth of PC crap.... and it was all JUNK. I'm like WTF, if you're gonna steal, at least make it GOOD stuff.

Been there, throughly understand your anger. Try using only one credit card for all internet/phone purchases. Keeps the perp from getting your main bank account info--at least 99% of the time. The other 1%, they were going to get you regardless of what you do. And BoA is required by Federal Law to CALL you about theft/unusual activity. It might be a generational thing, but I do NO bill paying or banking of any kind on the internet. None. My paypal account is a low $$ credit card. Monitor your other accounts, credit cards for any other activity. Hopefully they just got you on one item. Not everything.

I have a secondary account for recieving wire transfers. Looks like we'll rearrange a few things and just keep enough in the card account to cover purchases, balance in the other acct. Will have to make sure that they will not pay any overdrafts. What pisses me off the most is the thought that somebody I trust did this. But, how did the Brit get my info? Somebody sold my stuff?

Or stole the info from your supplier/someone you trust. Could have gone through the trash, been snooping on a wi-fi connection, anything. Or someone you trust did it to you thinking they could get away with it.

BofA....that's at least 1/2 of your problem right there.

BoA can be a pain, but they have done a good job with these problems. I guess they don't have much choice, but still...

Had the same problem with my BoA debit card earlier this year. Totally took me by surprise that someone tried to charge $700+ at a Kmart in Ohio... They denied the charge from the get-go because the person had placed the order online. Although it was a pain to get a new card, etc. I am glad they were on top of it and contacted me to see if the charges were mine.

Not sure if they were ever able to track down the fraudulent user and I have no clue where they would have gotten my card number, expiration date, Security code, etc. required to place an order...

While I was on the phone with the claims department, she said "Hey, another one just came in" 2700.00, denied immediately. Seems they start small, work their way up till the card is cancelled.

cwh wrote: Apparently the bank does not want me to nose around too much about who the perp was,

why would they not want you to nose around... do they think it might mess up their investigation or is there some other reason ?

Don't really know, but when I asked about where the stuff was being shipped to, I got a real non-answer.

I suspect most stolen credit cards come from stolen databases these days. Why dink around with restaurant garbage bins when you can get buy a lifted database from Russia?

But have you ever notice how motivated the banks are to shut down fraudulent transactions? It's because they're liable. So there's all sorts of clever data mining going on, and unusual transactions get flagged pretty quickly.

Then the banks go after the vendors who took the orders. Which is why, if you call FM, we go to fairly significant lengths to ensure we're taking orders from the legitimate card owner.

We sell via cards , too. Client will fill out a credit card authorization form with all pertinent info before anything gets shipped. In 2+ years we have not had a chargeback. Here's hoping. As I think about it, we have full credit card info on a lot of clients here. Just not in our computers, all hard copy in the files. Can't hack that. And a very good alarm on the office.

If you carry more than about 50 bucks on your debit card, you're not doing it right.

Quick in. Quick out.

wbjones wrote:

cwh wrote: Apparently the bank does not want me to nose around too much about who the perp was,

why would they not want you to nose around... do they think it might mess up their investigation or is there some other reason ?

The couple of times my credit card has been hacked, the vendors and the CC company would divulge nothing at all. I was pissed, but it ended up costing me nothing, except the pleasure of buying anything from New egg. I strongly suspected it was my neighbor.

I made a few purchases at a local company that is 75% Brit. Makes me worry, as I like them.

Now I have spent at least 5 hours working to correct this. Still showing -2000.00 in my main account, but should be cleared tomorrow. Need to order 4000.00 worth of stuff tomorrow to ship to Grand Cayman. Have to have wire transfer come into a different account, have to pay from a different account. Total FUBAR, but all will be taken care of. Suppliers and clients are supportive, but not the way I want to do business. arrgghh. Would REALLY like to meet up with the worthless scum that did this. I may be 65yo, but at 6' and over 200#, I can still do OK.

Just a thought: Report to police, wait 1 week, read police report.