Does nobody care about credit card fraud?

[edhopper]

My wife had two fraudulent charges this week on hr credit card. Both were for industrial equipment, bought online We contacted both the vendors and the Card company. The vendors have the shipping address for the purchases.
Her is the thing, none of them seemed interested in pursuing it. I guess as long as insurance pays, they let the criminals keep committing crimes.

(we think her number was stolen when she used it at a local store or restaurant since the thief's address is local)

This post is not about the charges for us, we aren't charged and are getting a new card. It is about active criminals acting with impunity and the companies doing nothing about them.

[jberryhill]

1. What's the total dollar value?

[edhopper]

7. around $1,000

[jberryhill]

11. The issue then becomes how one defines "care"

Do they "care" about fraud? Sure.

What would you estimate to be the total cost of demonstrating this care in a practical way? In other words, who is going to pay whom to "do something", what is the "something", and what will it cost?

If the estimated cost exceeds, say, $1000, then what is being accomplished?

I know the bank and account number of a guy in Philly who steals thousands of dollars at a pop, using forged emails that are sent to people in companies, posing as an executive, and giving them wire transfer instructions. I know for a fact that this guy has collected at least $40,000 in this scheme. That and an hour of my time will get me lovely on-hold music from the FBI.

[edhopper]

13. Credit card fraud

is close to $10 billion in this country. They have the shipping address for the charges, you would think thy would at least contact local law enforcement to look into it.

I guess crime does pay.

[jberryhill]

15. Of course crime pays

If crime didn't pay, there would hardly be any incentive.

That's why people do it.

There are some basic things that don't seem to be widely understood. One of them is that crime pays. Another is that taking illegal recreational drugs feels good.

[edhopper]

16. point taken

[fescuerescue]

2. No they don't

CC companies lump it in as the cost of doing business and pass that cost onto us as interest expenses.

Ever wonder why CC have the highest APR of any loan product except payday loans? This is why.

Furthermore, they feel that if they put pressure on the merchants to scrutinize every sale, it will discourage far more business than is lost in fraud.

Also - it's quite difficult to prosecute. You pretty much have to catch them red handed with the card and the item.

The cops are to busy writing speeding tickets that net $2000 an hour, than to spend a month catching a CC thief who will get fined $500

[jberryhill]

12. Better yet - they'll sell you "fraud protection"

They can more than recover the losses by selling $X per month "identity theft protection".

I would guess that the "identity theft protection" business more than makes up for the losses.

[Buckeyeblue]

19. CC has the highest rates because the loan is unsecured

But you can avoid interest by paying off your statement balance in full each month.

There is a lot more behind the scenes that goes on to track down the credit card fraudsters. I've seen many cases where fraudsters are caught and have to make restitution to the issuing bank.

But much of the fraud is done through organized crime outside of the US. That just becomes part of the price of doing business.

[dubyadiprecession]

3. I was trying to use my chase card to buy tires and my card was declined..

Chase called me right after to let me know that they were sending me new card. Someone in Columbia was trying to charge airline tickets to my card and chase declined them before they could get away with it. That was about two years ago.

[MH1]

4. The CC companies implement practices to prevent future fraud

and advise their customers on protecting their card.

I have been through several rounds of fraudulent charges and having to have my card replaced, until the last one. Other than the significant inconvenience of having to go update my info on recurring charges, the way it was handled was fine for me - I didn't lose any money and received the new card quickly.

My latest card has a chip which is supposedly more secure. (not sure how, for online purchases). For online purchases, my credit card company has a feature to go in and create a temporary number. The site user interface is clunky but the process works well, once I figured it out.

If your CC company doesn't give you a chip card and a way to generate a temporary # for online purchases (limited to one seller, an amount you set, and an expiration date you set), then get a new CC company.

(If the vendors got paid for the merchandise, why would they care? If the CC company paid out, they are looking to minimize risk on a larger scale than a couple purchases on one card. They maybe turn info over to police, who knows. I would think that some sort of report would be filed.)

[edhopper]

8. We are getting a new card

and the one we had was chipped.

We ar not being charged for the purchases.

My point is there are active criminals who did this that nobody wants to stop.

[MH1]

14. Yeah, it's a shame, but I think there's a lot of small-time theft

that is never pursued. But eventually the crooks get cocky and make a mistake and get caught. Your event wasn't the time for these guys. But I bet their time is coming.

[Farmer-Rick]

5. My card gets stolen about once a year.

I usually notice the charges right a way and cancel or freeze that card. I do a lot of business on line. But I noticed if I buy out of country, I'm more likely to get my card info stolen.

My credit card company has been good at not charging me for those frauds.

[treestar]

6. Another thing to be careful of

They put a recurring small charge on your card. Don't do a trial anything, their small print puts it so that you have agreed to a monthly charge.

[sarcasmo]

9. Chase is really good with fraud, imho. I've been alerted and sent new cards a two times over

the last 10 years.
When my first credit card fraud happened I contacted the local P.D. fraud department. Found out there was a couple restaurants that had employees using skimmers.
Tip, Never use your debit card at an gas station or restaurant where they take the card away from the table.

[edhopper]

10. But are they doing anything

about the criminals who are stealing billions through fraud?

[sarcasmo]

21. Russia and Asian hackers, fraud alert is about the only thing you can do.

[BSdetect]

17. Do banks just write off such losses as tax claims so they pay less tax?

If so we are all paying for these thefts indirectly.

[fescuerescue]

20. Yes but that's not the reason why

Is it a writeoff? sure but no (smart entity or person) incurs expenses SOLELY for the write-off. It's always better to have the cash than the writeoff.

They write it off because pursuing and collecting it cost more than they could collect. Plus their is the chilling effect on vendors when they overly scrutinize all transactions, which they feel cost more than the fraud.

They have learned that's far better for the business to simply pass the cost on to you and I in the form of higher APRs

[Coventina]

18. I used to work in the security dept. of a major credit card.

This was back in the 1990s, so things may have changed since then.

When a customer reported fraudulent charges, unless they believed it involved a family member, the cardmember was left completely out of it and never informed of any further investigation.

Only if the case was $2000 or more did it get assigned to an investigator (me).

If it was from a business that we had problems with before, we would refer it to our Merchant Fraud dept. (I didn't work there, so I don't know what their procedures were, but I know that we routinely cut off dealing with problematic merchants, and in some cases worked with LE to get them prosecuted, but going that far was pretty rare).

I would pull the tickets to see if there was an obvious problem with the sale that the merchant could have seen. If so, we would process a chargeback to the merchant for the sale. In order to do that we would tell the cardmember that they needed to send us a physical letter disputing the sale. This was part of the agreement we had with the merchant to do business with them. If they violated certain policies, they would have to eat the costs of the sale.

All in all, most cases were closed with no suspect and no recovery. However, overall, fraud was a fairly small portion of company losses compared with defaulting cardmembers. (Deadbeats, bankruptcies and the like). Our collections department was easily 20 times the size of the security dept.

So, to answer your question....yes and no. As investigators, we took our jobs really seriously, and did our best to find suspects and see justice served out of a sense of professional pride. (Many were former LE people, or wanna be LE people, not me, I just kind of stumbled into the position, but I did put my best efforts into it.).

However, the company didn't really care, as long as the numbers stayed relatively low.