Ack! Insidious credit card fraud

[lessel]

We recently 'upgraded' our Amex card from the Delta Blue to Delta Gold card (keeping the Blue one open so we don't take a hit). I saw a couple stray charges on the blue Amex account from Amazon after I told H to update his card info to the Gold card. So I nagged him about it. He confirmed he in fact update his Amex info and I told him to go ahead and freeze the card while I investigated what was going on. He did a 7-day freeze (we didn't want to report fraud right away until I could confirm what was going on), but last week was nuts and I didn't get to look into it. That freeze expired and the next day there was another charge... so I knew something was fishy. I finally sat down and uncovered that since September 2020 (!!) there have been ~45 charges to his Amex totaling over $1k. I had to download our Amex history into a spreadsheet and compare with his Amazon order history (including all transactions across types of Amazon payments... Marketplace, Prime, Digital, AmazonPay, etc.)--spot checking my Amazon account too in case for some reason they were charges I made (even though I've never had his Amex attached to my account). Double and triple checking anything and everything I can think of.

It started with a $1.99 Amazon charge, shortly after a visit to a car wash. This is my only guess as to the origins of the fraud.

But man, was this fucking sneaky. I check statements regularly, but we spend $$ on Amazon all the livelong day, so honestly I kind of skim those transactions and none of them (other than a $180 charge around Christmas time), were large enough to catch my eye. All small dollar amounts on an occasional basis that just completely flew under the radar.

Now DH has to call Amex and Amazon to report the fraud and see what can be done. I've caught past fraud issues right away, so I'm not sure how Amex will handle this one going on for a fucking year and a half. 

PSA to double check your statements... even more closely than you thought you were. UGH.

[k3am]

lessel, we had fraud on our chase card that went back for about 6 months. The only reason I noticed was because they started getting greedy and instead of buying a tank of gas a week, they started buying a tank of gas a day. I spot check everything mint every few days, and that one just went completely under the radar for me, because DH has a long commute and I have bad gas mileage, so we both were filling up at least once a week.

It was a little easier in our case because they ONLY used it at gas stations and only in SoCal (We're NorCal and hadn't traveled), and that card is used almost exclusively for online purchases, so once we realized something was going on, it was easy to point out which charges were fraudulent.

If I recall correctly, we got reimbursed for everything. I hope you have the same luck. I would not ever want to have to reconcile all my Amazon charges, but I guess I need to...

[lessel]

k3am - What a hassle! Yeah, one thing I noticed is that the charges were originally few and farther between, but now they're more frequent the past 6 months. Getting more greedy indeed!

H spent his lunch break talking to Amex today. He has to fax over my spreadsheet now too. The Amex guy already found a few other charges that I missed. Sounds like because the fraud dates back more than 10 months, that elevates the issue beyond what the regular fraud folks handle.

[dr.girlfriend]

OMG, I would never notice something like that, unfortunately! I just realized the other day that something I ordered on Amazon back in February never arrived. I went back into my order history and it was listed as "your package was probably lost" but I had to initiate a refund myself! It was just a $5 item, but it made me was realize how easy it would be to order from Amazon and forget about the order if it never arrived (or just assume I had forgotten to place the order and re-order) because apparently they don't "close the loop" at all!

[Susie]

Mar 29, 2022 12:37:54 GMT -5 dr.girlfriend said:

OMG, I would never notice something like that, unfortunately! I just realized the other day that something I ordered on Amazon back in February never arrived. I went back into my order history and it was listed as "your package was probably lost" but I had to initiate a refund myself! 

That's really strange.  I had a subscribe & save order last month that had an odd assortment of things in it, and apparently the box suffered damage in transit.  It went back to sender and Amazon initiated the refund right away.  I was mostly annoyed because there are certain items that I was running low on, and I was counting on S&S to replenish.  Like you sure none of this was salvageable?  Because now I gotta make an emergency run for Pull Ups, tampons, and kid toothpaste.

[flygirl]

I hate to tell you but if you order from Amazon and return something, you’re probably getting ripped off there also. I am a spreadsheeter and I reconcile every penny that gets spent. Recently I returned 3 items to Amazon and only got credit for 2. They still claim I got refunded and spent it (which I did not). I’m surprised with all the fraud and bad customer service recently that most people are still very lax on checking. It just ends up costing more for items when it isn’t caught. (Sorry, not meant to be on a high horse about it)

[madringal]

Wow, I'll be curious to see how Amex handles this. Under law, they only have to reimburse you for fraud in the last 90 days (well, from the last statement 90 days ago). Some banks do more, some won't.

[ellipses84]

That’s easy to miss since online places tend to charge as they ship and they break up the shipments so much. Like, I put in a $99 order and I received 5 boxes, which I see charges for $2.99, 4.57, 12.99, etc. for online and that doesn’t match the receipt that was emailed. For reimbursement purposes it difficult to even find the exact dollar amount of certain items with tax and shipping. I’m assuming you confirmed it’s not any media purchases like an audiobook or streaming movie? We’ve had some cc fraud for things like that and I always have to question the whole family to make sure they didn’t accidentally or purposefully buy it.

[lessel]

Mar 30, 2022 9:21:38 GMT -5 ellipses84 said:

That’s easy to miss since online places tend to charge as they ship and they break up the shipments so much. Like, I put in a $99 order and I received 5 boxes, which I see charges for $2.99, 4.57, 12.99, etc. for online and that doesn’t match the receipt that was emailed. For reimbursement purposes it difficult to even find the exact dollar amount of certain items with tax and shipping. I’m assuming you confirmed it’s not any media purchases like an audiobook or streaming movie? We’ve had some cc fraud for things like that and I always have to question the whole family to make sure they didn’t accidentally or purposefully buy it.

I did look at all Amazon transactions, even the AmazonPay things where you use Amazon on other websites. In addition to just checking Amazon orders, you can look at transactions in the payments part of your Amazon account. It became really obvious that any Amazon charge on my H's credit card was fraud since he exclusively used our debit card on Amazon in 2021 and 2020. Which, that's another dumb thing for security reasons and also, think of all the Delta miles we didn't get... silly H!

I'm curious how Amex will handle it too. H sent them everything yesterday and the guy said they would call us back at some point. H said they would resolve it within 30 days of us reporting, but I don't know how that will go.

[Poppy]

Similar thing happened to me where somebody hacked my Chipotle account and was ordering burritos in Philly for a few months. We get Chipotle a lot so I just glazed over the charges. It is definitely harder to detect when they use the card someplace you shop regularly!

Luckily I happened to catch ours fast enough that it was covered.

It's creepy when it happens, though.

[mokes]

That's so easy to miss. Thanks to your PSA, I checked my credit card statement and found a refund that was processed was never received and that the restaurant we went to H's birthday overcharged me by $50. While neither are fraud (giving the benefit of the doubt that it was accidental on the restaurant's part), they're likely things I would have missed, so thanks!

[lessel]

We haven't heard back from AMEX directly yet, but so far $400 in charges have been reversed on the card.

[pierogigirl]

Apr 1, 2022 8:09:02 GMT -5 lessel said:

We haven't heard back from AMEX directly yet, but so far $400 in charges have been reversed on the card.

Any other updates?

[lessel]

Apr 11, 2022 18:14:34 GMT -5 pierogigirl said:

Apr 1, 2022 8:09:02 GMT -5 lessel said:

We haven't heard back from AMEX directly yet, but so far $400 in charges have been reversed on the card.

Any other updates?

H has to call them back today. We got a letter that said they reversed $475 in charges, but no explanation of why the other charges weren't reversed. He called yesterday and it seemed like the issue hadn't been elevated in the way he was originally told it would be. Also, a transaction went through 2 days ago on the card that should be closed. (Which he forgot to tell the dude he talked to yesterday and ask wtf happened there. 🙄) So something is still amiss. Honestly I feel like I would be more efficient in handling this and asking the right questions, but I deal with 99.9% of our adulting stuff and I need him to take care of this.