I sold stuff on EBay years ago and the buyer claimed he never got them, PayPal held the money with no tracking number. I put a brick in a flat rate box, and sent them that tracking number, money released. The guy was pissed I beat him at his own game.
My credit union has been good about catching scams.
Pre-Covid I had my debit card compromised 3 time in about 3 months (I think it was paying at the pump). Each time the CU would call from their automated system and list off transactions for me to confirm if they were mine. They canceled the debit card, refunded the money into my account immediately, and automatically sent out a new card.
MIL fell for a romance scam. Just about cleaned her out before her daughters got involved.
Knock on wood, I've been lucky with only one credit card issue that happened probably 30 years ago. I was out on a dinner date at a fancy restaurant, and handed the waiter my credit card at the end of the meal to pay. The next day the credit card company called to ask if I had bought something in a far away state. I don't remember what it was, some small item that cost $20 or $30. I hadn't of course, so they canceled out the card and sent me a new one. It was the last time I ever let a waiter or anyone else take my card out of my sight.
BoulderG said:Some hellacious stories!
I was flying cross-country in a Cessna 182 a few years ago. Landing after one leg, I had a whole bunch of excited messages from the credit card company - they couldn't understand how I was buying $200 in gasoline four times across five states in one day!
One of the cannonball run guys during COVID ran into something similar. Got held up for 20 mins by his CC company when he tried to buy 40 gallons of gas multiple times in the same day across multiple states.
IIRC he was in a twin turbo benz (?) with the backseat ripped out and an auxillary fuel tank in its place.
I called a number in an email that purportedly was the IRS. I told the guy on the other end that him and his mother-berkelyer friends were welcome to come get the money owed, but I had "a thirty-aught-six and 13,000 rounds! Come and get me!" He hung up on me.
I had one of those "You have a virus on your Windows computer" guys call me. I played dumb... like worst tech support calls I've had to help with sort of dumb. He eventually snapped and cussed me out. Not sure he even realized I knew it was a scam.
One scam I used to get fairly often at work was somebody who would try to get a quote for a very large order and insist you use their own courier service. I presume the payoff is that their courier takes your money and never shows up. This scammer's bogus courier service, though, happened to have the name of a very real courier service. Which was a van and trucking company. In the UK. I decided to have a bit of fun claiming I was in touch with his courier service (which would in reality be the same guy) and that the courier service had told me they couldn't handle this shipment, since they were on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. I strung him on for a while like that.
My boss got his company login skimmed somehow, and a scammer used (boss) email to advise a client to wire a payment to a new account. Client read the email and assumed it was legit and directed a $275k payment to a bank in HK. Bank somehow alerted to fraud and the scammer then sent an urgent email in poorly worded engrish "from" (boss) email to the client asking him to authorize the payment.
At that point client became suspicious and made a phone call to my boss. Obviously had no clue but found out. Evidently the scammer would send emails and then delete them from boss Outlook account so there was no evidence of a sent email.
Company had to hire a HK lawyer but got most of the wire stopped. I believe we ate something like $50k.
..
Another partner at the firm had his network login skimmed somewhere and the scammer redirected his paycheck settings in Workday. He figured that out after the next pay period when the paycheck didn't show up. We all got two factor authentication shortly thereafter.
..
Scammers are clever. The penalties need to be far more severe.
Arrive at work one Monday morning. Check my bank online. Ooops, looks like my ATM card spent the weekend in Vegas. Looks like my ATM card does not drink and drive as there were two charges for cab rides.
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