Last month, after setting up a custom arrangement, we received an order from a man with an adress in new jersey, 2checkout.com had an initional warning about his cc maybe being fraudulent but they gave me the all clear, about 3 days after i emailed them regarding their initial concern. Everything was legit and this customer purchased 2 servers which i had setup at our rented space in Seattle facility, i pay for all the hardware so i charge heavy setup fees, he purchased a total of $1300 for 2 machines both with large setup fees, everything worked out well so far, then at the begining of the month, 3rd, we got a request for an upgrade from him for an additional HD in the server, we set it up at a cost of $200 even and a $79 setup fee, the transaction went through and i then purchased the additional hardware and payed for the install. Then on the 7th i got an email from a guy in PA who claims that we charged his CC without his permission, i then linked it back to the same customer who ordered the servers, i tried to explain the situation to the legal owner of the credit card and i was hitting myself on the head over not giving the number on the cc a call before paying for the hardware, after this has happened a proccess went through and the $1579 were removed from my funds. I am now stuck with $800+ in equipment and an arrangement with the datacenter, how can i go about retreiving my money? this is my first large fraud problem and i am utterly "pissed off"
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Kind regards,

Its a shame, the mods are dead, sorry move this to running a webhosting biz :)

You can go and try getting a lawsuite against the guy who bought the 2 Servers, if you have his Contact Details, try getting the Owner of the CC, to come with you in a team, and talk with the DC about this rip....

hi,

I hope you get a fax copy of the creditcard as evidence. if not, do it for future sake as this involve in large amount of money.

Thanks for submission of this thread. A small mistake and you are lost. I understand you must not be having any correct information about your buyer.

I'm presuming for that kind of transaction you're going to have a signed contract of some sort that includes his full confirmed contact details and his agreement to pay all relevent costs? If not, you've shot yourself in the foot :o

If you've got a lawyer, give them a call.

Here are three rules which will keep you out of trouble --

#1 -- Before processing any sale of size that would give you a problem, *call* the customer on a working phone and see if they can answer.

(Reason: A con man cannot leave a trace, therefore he is hindered because he cannot give you his real address or phone. Most scammers are kind of lazy, so they usually don't go to enough trouble to get the appearance of a phone and address correct.)

A voicemail, a pager; these are worthless. A cell phone and no home phone? Pass!

By the same token, immediately send him a piece of postal mail -- anything -- with 'Return Service Requested' printed above the envelope. Bogus address comes back, preventing you from going deeper in the hole.

2_ Either *you* process the card, or *ensure* that the company processing the card does all three things: confirm the CCV on the back, confirm the zip, confirm the street address). No match, no go.

If your credit-card processor had confirmed this bozo's ccv, it would have proved that he had the card in his hand. On the other hand, if your scammer found it lying on the street because the owner bozo lost it, your scammer wouldn't know the guy's street and zip.

If no match on all three -- pass!

3) If you are dealing in money beyond your means to absorb your loss, stall and go slow. (Give the scam more time to break.) Or, get more info: SS#, bank account. Or look the buyer up in information and call him. Give him an excuse why you need to have a certain amount via a money order, and get him to mail you something. In other words, be businesslike and cover yourself. There is nothing unbusinesslike about requesting payment, and/or payment in advance. *especially* if the cash is beyond your means.

These three rules will save you hundreds every year, maybe thousands.

I mean, you've lost the money, don't lose the lesson as well.

Good points there Arthur :) For future use it would be worth your while getting a lawyer to draw up some terms and conditions for clients to sign up to so you have something in writing too.

~robin

Originally posted by trakwebster
Or, get more info: SS#, bank account. Or look the buyer up in information and call him.

i dont think this is legal. at least i will never give a hosting business such information even if i were to pay a million.

Also check the area code of the phone number given to see if it matches the adress of the card holder!

Anywho.com allows you to do a reverse phone lookup (doesn't work that often, but there are times it matches)

You can try looking up their number to see if it matches their address. I would use this just as another way to prove to yourself its valid rather than base business off it because a large majority of numbers will not lookup to an address - so don't get shocked it it cant find a match. But if it does find a match, and its a different address you are probably looking at fraud.

Google will actually do a reverse on US phone numbers :)

We don't take CC for amounts that large, the percentage taken by merchants takes too much of a cut, so that helps protect us in one way as we only take wire/standing order/cheque.

The only reason a cc was used was because it was not through our 2co account, it was through a first party merchant.

How about just call the guy up? Was the number a fake?

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