Fraudulent Bank Card Charges

[*Shinzon*]

You may want to run a credit check, didn't see if you mentioned it before. Once they have your information they might be able to access more than one card if they didn't steal the information online.

[Shadowscythe]

Had a near identical thing happen to me a couple of years ago here in merry old England. Someone got my details somehow, thieves tested the account with a smaller purchase first that I might not notice (which admittedly I didnt). They then booked two easyjet flights on it sending me right past overdraft limit.

Called the bank immediately, confirmed which were the fraudulent purchases on the card, then cancelled it and sent out a new one. Card came the next day and money came back in 3-4 days. They informed me on the phone they would be contacting the police regarding the situation and asked me to sign a form as evidence of the unauthorised transactions.

I wouldnt worry about waiting til Tuesday, as the first test charge they put on my card was 2 MONTHS before they used it to buy the plane tickets, and I still got the money back for all the fraudulent transactions.

[Dainslaif]

Friend of mine tells me she saw airindia charges a lot during her bank employment, so I'm guessing it's a scam where a ticket is purchased through a bank card and then returned for a refund by the scammer. Pretty slick I guess.

Unless AirIndia is completely retarded, I've never heard of being able to purchase something with a card, and then return it for cash. The money always goes right back to the card. Otherwise they'd be losing so much money due to the chargeback + refund it'd be insane.

[Gadritan]

please find another bank in the future. Chase, BofA, whatever, they ALL have real live 24 hour service, fuck that it's a holiday, that's a shitty bank.

Just chiming in to say that BofA is the worst experience I've ever had with a bank hands down.

That $500 I racked up in overdraft fees because THEY didn't record my deposit correctly...never got it resolved. Despite depositing cash before noon on Friday (which isn't even supposed to matter anymore as it's "instant") and having the receipt for said deposit, they refuse to do anything about it.

Now, the most insane and amazing part of it. They started to charge me overdraft fees for the overdraft fees. Starting that Monday, it went into this crazy cycle of charging me $35 for an overdraft fee, which then incurred another overdraft fee, which then incurred another overdraft fee and so on.

It went over $1k before I realized what it was doing. I went all the way up the chain and spoke with some of their higher ups, the local DA, the BBB, and my Senators. BofA employees hung up on me numerous times because they didn't know what to do (I wasn't being rude, you could just tell they got to a point where they just kinda' said "uhhhhh, fuck it"). It's still unresolved and it's already affected my credit, which I highly doubt I can get reinstated once it's been resolved.

The kicker? This was right after we bailed their asses out.

Live service 24/7? If you don't mind getting an outsourced operator that can barely speak English who's reading from a script, have at it. If you want incompetent employees who hang up on you when they don't know what to do, BofA is for you.

So yeah, kinda' got a grudge against them for the sheer insanity of this scenario. Should have been a simple fix that Monday of "oh we fucked up, you're deposit is in there now and don't worry about the overdraft fees." Instead, it's been a total nightmare.



tl;dr BofA will fuck you as hard as they can and there's nothing you can do about it. Pick another bank.

They'll generally process the largest charges first so that when you go below 0 the 13 little charges you made cost you an extra $35 bucks each.

Yep. iirc they're trying to make this practice illegal atm.

[kyod]

As of July 1st, if you haven't opted in for programs that banks offer you to cover you in case you go over, then they can't charge you overdraft fees. They are now required to decline the transaction if you don't have enough.

[Gadritan]

Yeah. Didn't have that option then.

[Amarok]

As of July 1st, if you haven't opted in for programs that banks offer you to cover you in case you go over, then they can't charge you overdraft fees. They are now required to decline the transaction if you don't have enough.

Where I work this is true for new accounts, but a currently held accounts won't be auto-opted out of ODP until Aug. 15th.

[Kerberoz]

Regions and Visa both have 24-7 numbers, but you're talking to Robbie the Robot instead of a person, and there is no "halp some fgt is stealing my money" option.

99% of the time pressing 0 repeatedly will connect you to a real person.

[Dainslaif]

As of July 1st, if you haven't opted in for programs that banks offer you to cover you in case you go over, then they can't charge you overdraft fees. They are now required to decline the transaction if you don't have enough.

Huh, really? I'll have to check into that. I just resolved an overdraft with Wachovia (accidentally used it to pay my CC for the full amount instead of just the 100 in cash I deposited). The phone jockey was nice but wouldn't waive it fully, the branch manager was awesome and took care of it immediately since I had already deposited a check to cover the balance.

[Minions]

My bank does not have this go into affect until August 1st, so guessing its by the end of July.

[Nephlite]

Worst thing about credit card fraud is you never know what information is leaked. From my own personal experience, most credit cards are encoded with some personal data or code that can be deciphered in to personal data.

Like people have suggested, watch your credit report (you can get one free credit report per year from each of the three major credit companies) and if things begin to look fishy, there's fraud alert centers with your local field FBI office or head to the U.S. Secret Service website and it'll give you ton's of information on protecting yourself and resolving some issues.

The police report was great but honestly, credit card fraud is the fastest growing crime in the world and by far the least investigated. Depending on your local PD's investigative capabilities, you may or may not be able to resolve this issue immediately.

When my CC got stolen, they charged $1500 the first day and kept going. I had the card canceled, filed a report with the fraud division of the DCMPD, and got my money back. 2 months later, same thing happened. The thief happened to get my internet banking information somehow from my CC info so he was able to track the new cards as I activated them. Called the fraud division Sergeant and was given the "We're looking in to it." speech before I decided to do some leg work myself. Contacted a buddy in computer forensics which he did a very basic internet search of the routing transaction number for the purchase and discovered it happened 3 times at an ATM in Singapore. Called the local PD in that area and requested the surveillance video's (did I mention I did all of this without mentioning to the person I was talking to that I was a cop? Amazing what you can get done if you talk with confidence and talk like you're important). Isolated the time/date/transaction to a guy on the three occasions who used a laptop card swipe at the ATM (the guy at the register never even looked at the kid using a laptop to make transactions). Set up a phone session with a detective from the Singapore PD, told him what I found, e-mailed him the picture of the kid and two weeks later got a phone call stating that they picked the guy up at the same store where he used my info to withdraw money. Took him of the street and only took about 5 hours of actual snooping around and phone calls.

[Mikus]

I "lost" my wallet while in Vegas on my first out of 4 nights there. Real long story, but 1 minute I'm in a club, next minute I'm walking down Flamingo going lord knows where. When I got back downtown I went to the police and reported it. After that I called my banks and my credit card companies. They had me go over charges from the time I said I thought I lost my wallet until the phone call. Two charges were made on one card, the other card and my atm card weren't used. Charges were made on my Chase card which they immediately took off but told me they'd mail me paperwork I'd have to sign stating they were false charges.

Try and stay calm and if you haven't already talked to someone, just remember to stay cool but be firm when talking. I'm sure it will all work out.

[GentaiShinigami]

As of July 1st, if you haven't opted in for programs that banks offer you to cover you in case you go over, then they can't charge you overdraft fees. They are now required to decline the transaction if you don't have enough.

Admittedly I haven't looked into this much, but at my bank I could only opt out of the one-time fee's (gas, food, etc) overdraft protection. There is no way for me to opt-out of all other overdraft protection (lolprotection) such as auto billpay payments that would overdraft. Those will still be paid by the bank and charge me overdraft fees. I'm not sure if this applies to all banks or if mine is just trying to screw me.

Overdraft's need to go away entirely or should be an opt-in feature only. If I could wipe all traces of it from my account I would in a heartbeat.

[Melchiah]

UPDATE:

This is a pro scam. Charges were made to my bank card either late Friday evening or early Saturday morning. Because of the holiday weekend, Regions was closed until this morning. This means that the fraudulent transactions are still pending, some 4 days later. Regions will not allow me to file the dispute affidavit until the charges are actually posted to my account, which will be sometime after today. I had to take leave time from work to get to the branch office to fill this paperwork out, only to find out I had wasted my time. I can't keep doing this.

It has been a nightmare actually getting a human being on the phone to talk to about this. Fortunately, I got connected with an excellent customer service rep who clued me in on where to go online and fill out the dispute form. She was awesome, but actually getting her on the phone was a goddamned nightmare.

More tomorrow when I find more information. Also, anyone who is more internet-savvy than I, I'd be super grateful if you could find me a way to get someone from Cineplex on the phone. The store number the charges were made at is Cineplex #8030.

[Gadritan]

UPDATE:



More tomorrow when I find more information. Also, anyone who is more internet-savvy than I, I'd be super grateful if you could find me a way to get someone from Cineplex on the phone. The store number the charges were made at is Cineplex #8030.

Uh. Just googled that + phone number. http://media.cineplex.com/ContactUs.aspx

Or is this the specific one? http://www.seawaymall.com/directory/k19.html

[Melena]

Cheated and found the corporate sales rep's phone #'s and names. Can probably call one of them to get more info.

http://www.cineplex.com/CorporateSales/ContactUs.aspx

[Gadritan]

Cheated by using google? lol.

[Melena]

Cheated by going to the site and hitting contact us and getting corporate sales

[Nephlite]

The internet is a vast and powerful tool. Even cops use the internet to search stuff (duh). Just get creative like these guys and you'll be able to pull in some good information. I even applied to the Best Buy website as an employee, which upon registering gave me store access for location by store number and have been able to do much more specific store searches in the past (awesome when you're trying to find the number to a store and want to ask if they have that elusive PSP 1000 in stock without talking to Ray-Ray or Pookie at the front desk and getting the "Yeah nigga this foo wants dat sheet you got it? Wha?! No WAI! He got that shi~...").

[Milks]

You didn't happen to use your card in Hanceville or Cullman, did you? There was a huge problem up there with credit card info getting stolen from certain places. I dunno if it's still going on now, but doesn't hurt to check.