A very UNmerry Christmas for a small business owner
Today, I'm really really sad..... After more than 16 years in business, Frantic Stamper has fallen victim to internet fraud. Yep, no matter how careful you are, the thieves sneak by and when they do, it hurts big time.
The story starts last month. We received a decent size order (around $600, which is not unseen for us) from a lady in San Diego, shipping to her "friend" in London England. This sort of thing happens all the time, so I thought nothing of it. I remember one of my employees making the comment of "I want to be her friend". About a week later, another order, this time from a lady in Apple Valley California, also shipping to England (this one for about $650) but shipping to a different recipient. Again, I thought nothing of it, other than "nice order". Another week goes by, and this time a $715 order from another person in California (San Diego), but delivering to the same person as the San Diego lady. Seemed strange, but not out of the ordinary.
It wasn't until the 4th such order came through my desk that I started questioning. This 4th order was $737, and ordered from someone in Puyallup Washington, and shipping to one of the 2 above London England addresses. This time, I looked at it a little closer and something, I don't know what, but something told me there was something wrong about it. So I decided to do a little research. Looking back at earlier transaction, there was yet another big order ($470) a week before the above 4 orders..... so we're at 5 fishy orders now. Looking at this most recent one closer, I see the email address is a Hotmail address as were the other 4 (Hotmail or gmail on all). I then tried to call the phone number provided, only to get a recording from a defunct bank stating the phone number was invalid (still connected, but a recording stating it was invalid and the bank had closed).
Now my heebee-jeebies are really going off. I tried to email "Barbara" asking her to call me because I had a question about her order. She emailed back stating she couldn't call me because she was in Puerto Rico. I'm pretty sure they have phones in Puerto Rico..... something's not right. She tells me her "scrapfriend" needs the items urgently and to please send the order without the missing item. Hmmmmmm.... Something is not right..... so I stall her a bit. I emailed her the next day and told her we would ship the order "Monday". Meanwhile, I contacted my account rep at PayPal (who handles all our merchant services transactions .... i.e. credit card payments). I gave our account rep all the details of all 5 transactions and after 24 hours of investigating, his answer was 1 word: fraud.
We were advised to "refund" the latest transaction (the $737 order), and to just "wait and see" for the other 4. Well, this morning, the bombshell that was expected came. The first transaction was indeed reversed by the "buyer's" credit card company as an unauthorized transaction. F.R.A.U.D. It's just a matter of time for 3 more big "payments" to be reversed.
So what happens in these cases?
-The thieves somehow get their hands on a victim's cc info and address.
-They place orders online with unsuspecting businesses such as ours.
-Credit cards are run automatically behind the scenes by Paypal using address verification. It's all encrypted so we don't see anything but an authorization number.
-We fill the order and ship it.
-A month goes by and the victim gets their credit card statement with fraudulent charges.
-Victim contact their credit card company and says "I didn't buy anything from so-and-so"
-Credit Card company files a "chargeback" with the merchant processing service (in our case PayPal)
-Paypal contacts us and TAKES the money back.
In the end, the thieves have the merchandise, and we have zippo. We can show that we shipped the package, but that means nothing. Since the thieves are overseas, we can't very well travel to London to press charges, or throw a rock through their window. All we can do is cry.
Today, I am crying......
Hugs,
-Fran
www.franticstamper.com
