Online fraud - the perfect crime?

mirrorball

We have an online store and sold and shipped a €300 item to a UK address in January. When the same guy placed a similar order the following week using a different credit card, we took a closer look at the transaction. On Realex we could see that he had tried three different non-UK credit cards before getting one to be accepted. We had some correspondence with the customer and he provided id and his credit card number. We tried to confirm the details with his bank but they were unable to do so and we cancelled the order.

Since then we've been half-expecting a chargeback on the original sale. Then this week we received another order for the same item from a different name at the address. When we checked Realex, we could see that EIGHTEEN different credit cards from various non UK banks had been tried before the transaction went through.

I've reported this to our merchant service provider, Realex and the guy's local police in the UK. Sympathetic as they all were, none of them were much help. I accept that as a retailer we are hit from time to time with chargebacks and other such losses but I'm surprised by the lack of interest in what appears to be obvious criminal activity. The UK Police did direct us to http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/. We filed a report with them but didn't get the impression that there would be any concrete action unless they received a raft of complaints about the address.

To cap it all off, I had a dig around eBay and I'm pretty confident I've found the guy selling on the original item from January. He even copy and pasted the description from our website!

Anyway, long story short, am I in the wrong business? Should I just get a bunch of stolen credit card numbers and get shopping???!!

folan

mirrorball wrote: »

Anyway, long story short, am I in the wrong business? Should I just get a bunch of stolen credit card numbers and get shopping???!!

no.