hargle
Veteran Member
On Sunday I was checking my bank account online, and noticed a ~$10 charge that posted the day before that I didn't remember purchasing.
I may be getting senile and have had a few bouts of drunken ebaying, but this one was definitely outside my brain.
I contacted the merchant, and they dug up the details. The name, ship-to and billing address were mine. The email address used was definitely not mine. It also seems the domain used is not actually registered, so the email would have bounced. The merchant even provided an IP address too- it was definitely not me.
I figured the IP address would not be in this country, but it was actually someone local to me in another suburb- maybe 15 miles away.
I'm aware that the new CC fraud trend is to do small amounts so the victim doesn't realize it, and keeping it local makes it both harder to dispute and harder for the CC company to detect, but this just leads to more questions:
1) Is this person going to troll my house now and wait for UPS to drop off the package and steal it off my doorstep? Seems like a lot of work/risk for a $10 reward.
2) Was this just a test purchase to see if my CC was still active, and the next purchase was going to be a bigger hit?
3) Was the plan to contact the merchant and cancel the order and refund it to a different card? (can they do that?)
Obviously I've closed that CC down and am monitoring any other activity, and I'm thankful that I found this in the early stages, but it just seems so weird for someone to order an actual product instead of something virtual they could have gotten instantly. Obviously not a criminal mastermind I'm dealing with here.
I may be getting senile and have had a few bouts of drunken ebaying, but this one was definitely outside my brain.
I contacted the merchant, and they dug up the details. The name, ship-to and billing address were mine. The email address used was definitely not mine. It also seems the domain used is not actually registered, so the email would have bounced. The merchant even provided an IP address too- it was definitely not me.
I figured the IP address would not be in this country, but it was actually someone local to me in another suburb- maybe 15 miles away.
I'm aware that the new CC fraud trend is to do small amounts so the victim doesn't realize it, and keeping it local makes it both harder to dispute and harder for the CC company to detect, but this just leads to more questions:
1) Is this person going to troll my house now and wait for UPS to drop off the package and steal it off my doorstep? Seems like a lot of work/risk for a $10 reward.
2) Was this just a test purchase to see if my CC was still active, and the next purchase was going to be a bigger hit?
3) Was the plan to contact the merchant and cancel the order and refund it to a different card? (can they do that?)
Obviously I've closed that CC down and am monitoring any other activity, and I'm thankful that I found this in the early stages, but it just seems so weird for someone to order an actual product instead of something virtual they could have gotten instantly. Obviously not a criminal mastermind I'm dealing with here.