Credit card hit oddly

[groomporter]

We got a call Friday alerting us to some unusual activity on our Visa card and it seems someone has been ordering products and services on it. (Vitamins, B movie DVDs, some sort of grant search service...) But the odd thing is they are having all the purchases sent to our address so it almost seems more like a prank rather than attempted theft. So we've canceled that card, put watches on our other cards, and requested a copy of our credit report just to be safe. (Unless they were trying to just create enough confusion that the actual theft might be missed in the shuffle?) Fortunately we specifically use only one card for online purchases and keep a closer watch on things compared to a lot of people.

[Muffin]

Yikes!!! Glad you caught it early before it became a real mess!!! In these days of online everything, bad things can happen so quickly!!!!

[groomporter]

Yeah, we don't use our cards that often if we can help it, so it was that there were so many purchases in 2-3 days that flagged for the company that issued the card to us.

[white trillium]

We've (I work in the financial industry) seen a bit of fraud where the fraudsters leave the shipping address the same and intercept the product/package(s), that type of fraud tends to slip through the cracks (shipping to a different address tends to raise a red flag.  Also, as you noted, the flurry of activity can be used to hide the "real" fraud.

[groomporter]

Something like that crossed our minds too, but I would think they would go for something higher value than DVDs of little-known movies, and vitamins (or grant search information???). At least the credit card company was able to give us the phone numbers of the companies things had been order from, and we were able to stop shipment on most of them. The rest we'll just leave unopened and ship mark "refused return to sender" so the post office won't charge us anything to send them back.

[DonaCatalina]

Sometimes they will charge several items of small value to see if anyone notices. Then they will pounce with a big ticket item.
I had this happen to me after I had a wallet stolen. Luckily we reported it quickly so only a couple of small charges actually got through. But according to my CC company they tried to run a $9grand online purchase of a media system after the card was cancelled.

[Rage]

I have dealt with this a couple times and the Credit Card companies have been really good about taking care of it. The last couple times I saw a $1 charge and called the card company. They stopped it right away.

Let me say that this is much easier to deal with then having your late spouse Identity stolen. This happened to me. The family that had "purchased" my late wife identity had 14 cards (store & credit), 1 car, 1 truck and a house under her name and SSN. There was also a "daughter" that was collecting SS benefits under her name. She never had any children.

I kept getting stuff from JCPenny's and when I asked them to stop sending the info I found out about everything. We ended up getting the Feds involved. I was not responsible for anything because all of this happened after the date that her death certificate was signed. Still sucks and it made me mad as hell.

[groomporter]

Sometimes they will charge several items of small value to see if anyone notices. Then they will pounce with a big ticket item.

-That would make the most sense I think.

I have dealt with this a couple times and the Credit Card companies have been really good about taking care of it. The last couple times I saw a $1 charge and called the card company. They stopped it right away.

Yeah one of the charges was $1.00 at Napster

[Rage]

Both times was a $1 charge at Best buy for me.

[white trillium]

A $0 or $1 authorization at Sephora.com is also another "gateway" transaction.

[Synnovea]

Same here...had a less than $2.00 charge to i-tunes, which neither of us subscribed to.  Reported possible fraud, canceled card and now have a new one.  I also have a service through Equifax where it alerts me if my credit card balance goes up 25% or $200, which is awesome.