Monday, April 25, 2011

Virtual Offices

Of the latest successful scams that victimized my company three of them used virtual offices.

Last month I noticed a suspicious order but it was the day after it had been shipped. After a Google search I found that the location was a virtual office located at:

80 Broad Street, 5th Floor, New York, New York, 10004. I called the Regus office and got a hold of an employee at the location. I told her my case and that the goods credit card was stolen. She seemed sympathetic but needed to talk with her supervisor. She also told me they have been getting lots of items for this person. The fraudster comes with mailing labels redirects everything to Africa. The supervisor never called. I suppose as long as the fraudsters are paying them, Regus does not have a reason to complain. Just remember Karma is a bitch. You are profiting from other company's misery.

The other Regus location they used was 1979 Marcus Ave, Suite 210, Lake Success, NY, 11042.

I got scammed

I have been scammed out of $1700 worth of goods. The credit card companies helped them get away with it. Here is how they did it.

I am an online merchant using the bank's online system for processing my credit card orders. I paid a developer to have it integrated into my company website.

The fraudsters used stolen credit card information to purchased goods. The cards are still valid at the time of purchase and they have the correct address information as well. Therefore authorization is easily obtained. After we sent the goods that true cardholder complains about the charges. We get a chargeback i.e. the bank takes bank the money & we lose the goods.

I called the bank with the information such as the IP address, ship to address, etc. saying is there anything we can do with the authorities. They said, "nope."

So we merchants are on our own. We pay 2-4% of our sales to VISA, Mastercard and AMEX to assume all the risk.