What Kind of a Weird-Ass Scam is This
 

So here's an odd little story - I noticed three charges over two days in my bank account, all Amazon purchases, totaling about $36. I didn't order anything, so I called Amazon, and they confirmed that the orders were made with my card, but not my Prime account. I changed my password anyway, to be safe, then called my bank, canceled my debit card, and ordered a new one. My bank's fraud division said that because I had a, quote, "preexisting relationship" with Amazon, they would need confirmation directly from Amazon that the purchases were not made by me, using my account. Basically my bank accused me of trying to get $36 of free stuff by making a phony fraud claim, despite the fact that I have banked with them for fifteen years and have a...healthy balance with them. Their justification being, I've bought stuff from Amazon (the largest retailer in the world), in the past. Time to find a new bank, I think.

Anyway.

Yesterday, lo and behold, what appears on my front porch but the items that were fraudulently ordered. The name on the package was Roseann Craig, but the address was mine. What kind of a weird scam is this? Somebody gets my card info from a skimmer (presumably, the card has never left my possession), and rather than trying to clean me out, they order thirty-six bucks of junk on Amazon and...have it delivered to my house? How the hell do they have my home address since they didn't order the stuff from my Amazon account?

I am confused. Does anybody have any idea how this scam is supposed to work? Presumably the end game is not to randomly send me cheap junk I don't want.

These days with the ability to track packages via text message, some sellers are using stolen cards to purchase items and pick them up shortly after delivery watching from down the street or waiting nearby and swooping in shortly after the "delivered" text arrives.

I work for USPS as a letter carrier and have seen this recently on my route. Packages started showing up for weird names so I knocked and they contacted the postal inspectors...not sure what happened but I'm guessing one of their cards info was stolen and used similar to yours. What is weird to me is that they mailed it to YOUR address instead of some random house they'd scoped out. If it were me, I'd mail it anywhere but your address but maybe sellers become more suspicious if you order things shipped to a different address than the billing address?

^ it reckon the same as above.

Order it, and hope to get there and steal the package before you get home.
As far as it being your address, Maybe Amazon just post it to the address that matches the card used? not sure, I dont use amazon (it's range is small and cost is high here in Aust, plus the whole borderline slave labour evil empire thing)




as far as the amount, a lot of the smarter scammers will make sure to only do smallish purchases in the hope it's not noticed.
They've probably skimmed a few cards and figure they can get away with a few dollars on each one for a while before being caught.

I know if someone charged $30 on my card i probably wouldn't notice it for ages.
But if they cleaned it out i'd sure as hell know.

I don't think you can skim addresses, just the info directly on the card. Mag stripe only holds like 200 bytes and most of that is used for name and account number.

I've heard of weird amazon scams to build account credibility, I bet your amazon account was compromised and they got the card info and address from there. They charge a bunch of small trash items to have more chance of successful transactions. Nobody really cares about the garbage that ends up being shipped. I guess they hope most of it goes unnoticed?

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/af...ams-2019-07-16

Could be that Amazon requires the first few purchases on a new account to be shipped to the billing address, then they'll let you send to your own address? Or some sort of Amazon credit scam where they claim the stuff was never "delivered" and then use or sell the Amazon credit?

This is semi-related, but you should inever use your debit card to buy stuff on the internet (or even in person, honestly). If a CC# gets stolen and a pile of charges gets rung up, the worst you end up with is a credit card that's maxed out with fraudulent charges. That's annoying at best but won't mess up your life too badly. If your debit card gets stolen, you could end up with an empty bank account, bounced checks, cancelled mortgage/rent payments, etc. Unlikely, but not impossible, and really bad if it does happen. I don't even carry a debit card with me - I can access ATMs with my phone if need be, so it's not worth the risk of losing or getting it stolen iMO.

This is a takeaway for me too. I'll use my AmEx in the future, their fraud department is legendary.

I still can't wrap my head around exactly what happened with this scam. The items purchased were all unrelated cheap junk and they were delivered to my house. A $20 lady shaver and some athletic tape. It's the weirdest thing. I'm keeping a weather eye on my credit and other details since I want to refi my house soon, but just canceling my card seems to have stopped the bleeding. Weird.

The scam is that they buy random crap, and see if it triggers some sort of response. If not, they order a large ticket item (TV, computer, etc.) and then swoop in to grab it before you get home.

I've heard this as well, but have you every had your Debit card drained before? I have twice in my life, once with Bank of America and I was 20 with about $77 dollars left to my name when it was cleared. Next time it was $1300, but this time I was 30ish and it was a local credit union. Both times though I simply called my number for Debit card and money was back in my account same day. They always say that the money is "loaned" to you for 3 months while they check it out; but never once have I been denied on any fraud charge since back in 2003 with Paypal(the devil).

Before I had a credit card, my visa debit card was compromised and I had a few fraudulent purchases. I went down to the bank, they cancelled the card and the disputed charges were removed.

The difference is there exists legislation to protect you against fraud on a CC but on a debit card there is no similar legal protection. It is simply a matter of bank policy and managerial discretion whether or not to replace your funds. Others have not always fared so well in regard to being made whole.

It is better to request an "ATM" card without the VISA or MasterCard logo. This necessitates entry of a PIN to retrieve funds from the account.

My “atm” card has a Visa logo. But if I elect to use it as a debit card or to retrieve funds from my account, i need to use my PIN.

If your ATM has a visa logo, then it is a debit card, not just an ATM card.

Exactly. And he is at risk.

:eek:

It blows my mind that people still use debit cards for everything tbh
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Basically. My bank's mobile app has the ability to generate a one-time code that will let me withdraw cash from any ATM without my debit card. Armed with that knowledge, there's literally no reason to carry a debit card on your person at any time.

I will check into that. I want it.

EDIT: BoA app, there it is, behind “Menu”