Stolen cc. Odd situation advice

Guurn

Guurn

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Not actually me but a buddy of mine. He was checking his email at work and he was getting inundated with spam. In the middle of it he noticed a purchase on eBay with one of his credit cards, his family doesn't use Apple for anything. After checking on eBay he found the purchase in the hidden purchases area, it was being shipped to a different state.

He cancelled the cc and had them reverse the charge. He also contacted the seller but they weren't interested in helping. The next part is my mistake. I saw him the following day and after he recounted the story ....well i hate stealing. I suggested he intercept the shipment since eBay provided tracking. It cost $12. So now he has an Apple watch and it seems sketchy. He really doesn't want to tell the cc company because he doesn't want to be accused of, i don't know, theft?

Does anyone know what is up with this odd situation? Is there anything he should do now and was it just a stupid thing to do?
 
Khane

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By "intercept" do you mean physically drive to the address it's being shipped to and take it from the mailbox? In a different state? Or are you saying eBay has a "Intercept this shipment for $12" button?
 
Guurn

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Nope, you can have a package sent to a different address even if it is in transit. It just costs a little. I think it was UPS.
 
Khane

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Well, I think the only repercussion here is you may have helped the scumbag who stole the CC get away with it. Or maybe have made your friend look like a fraudster to authorities and the CC company.

The CC company may have gone after this person with criminal charges. And they would have had a paper (electronic audit) trail tying that address and the person at said address, to the crime. Instead, the person at the address can say "What Apple watch?" and when any investigators look further they're going to see it actually got delivered to your friend after all. Which... well... now it may seem like a fraud scheme to the CC company that your friend was behind so yea...

That may be way overblown but I know I likely would let the CC company know what happened and wouldn't keep the watch.
 
Khane

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Guurn said:
That's what i was thinking, do they ever go after the scum?
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CC companies? Uh, yea. They spend a lot of money on fraud prevention and litigation.

I work for a stored value card provider and administrator for healthcare spending. And the CC companies, insurance companies, and banks we work with even require us to have our own separate, in house fraud division to investigate shit like this just to do business with them. On top of their in house divisions.
 
Khane

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They probably are. Still leaves a trail for investigators.
 
Captain Suave

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Find a way to return it, IMO. It's just fundamentally dishonest not to, never mind that it's a bad look in case this gets investigated.
 
Guurn

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Yeah, we checked the house and it's abandoned according to city records. I told him to contact the cc company.
 
agripa

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Did he have to file a police report? I imagine the loss to the cc company is to low to investigate.
 
Lanx

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Guurn said:
Not actually me but a buddy of mine. He was checking his email at work and he was getting inundated with spam. In the middle of it he noticed a purchase on eBay with one of his credit cards, his family doesn't use Apple for anything. After checking on eBay he found the purchase in the hidden purchases area, it was being shipped to a different state.

He cancelled the cc and had them reverse the charge. He also contacted the seller but they weren't interested in helping. The next part is my mistake. I saw him the following day and after he recounted the story ....well i hate stealing. I suggested he intercept the shipment since eBay provided tracking. It cost $12. So now he has an Apple watch and it seems sketchy. He really doesn't want to tell the cc company because he doesn't want to be accused of, i don't know, theft?

Does anyone know what is up with this odd situation? Is there anything he should do now and was it just a stupid thing to do?
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you better call that credit card company, tell them exactly what you did.

also it doesn't sound like his cc info was hacked, sounds like his ebay was hacked and they just used saved cc info on the account or paypal? and the funding option is the cc on paypal file.
 
Khane

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agripa said:
Did he have to file a police report? I imagine the loss to the cc company is to low to investigate.
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The CC companies dont look at these things as isolated incidents, because they usually aren't.
 
Hoss

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Guurn said:
That's what i was thinking, do they ever go after the scum?
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No they don't.

I just had one of mine stolen. They used it to make a payment on paypal, buy a papa john's pizza, and take about 6 lyft rides. I saw that and was like, "Fuck yeah, we have these fuckers dead to rights." I looked up the paypal dude. He had one item listed on ebay with 1 feedback in the last month. CZ tennis bracelets for $50 each with more than 10 available. So he was sketchy and probably wouldn't have helped. The payment to him was $500 and some change, so someone would have had to buy 10 of them. But I figured with the pizza and lyft rides, surely there would be a trail to follow. Even if they didn't get the thief they should be able to bust the people the thief sold it to. I called the CC company to ask what I should do and I got a 15 minute speech about how it's pointless to follow up. He said I could report it to the police, but it's still pointless.

They do investigate some shit, but it's pretty rare and has to be a slam dunk to make it worth their while. More of a slam dunk than calling papa john's and asking where the pizza was delivered or calling lyft and seeing if any of those rides were to or from a residence. Actually, I think a key factor is that they won't have any trouble recovering their money from paypal, papa johns, and lyft. So it's an inconvenience for them and me but not a loss for either of us.

I have not reported it to my local police yet, but only because I had an early flight the next morning to go overseas for a month, and I was still trying to get packed. I might report it when I get back
 
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mkopec

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So this only happened to me twice in my life but this this past SAT I get email from bank that some suspicious shit was blocked and my Bank Card canceled. So I call and they tell me that someone tried to charge up some $1500 worth of shit like cell phone bill, and other online purchases. Of course Mon banks closed but I notice one charge at some Wallmart that was left on there for like $370.

So I go into bank and they issue me new card, take care of the wallmart thing, but I ask them what are they doing about shit like this. They tell me to go issue a police report because they and frankly visa dont do shit. I find it rather odd that no one investigates shit like this. Like a nonchalant attitude.

I understand that this shit is rather hard to track, probably impossible, but I cannot fathom some dude from Arkansas 9where these charges were from) being a criminal mastermind and covering his online tracks.

Last time this happened to me like 10 yrs ago some dude got a hold of my number and charged up a fed ex bill to send some mushrooms across the country, some $400 worth of shipping, I kid you not, fucking mushrooms. I got it all taken care of but later I had fed ex up my ass to pay up for the charge. They would not listen to me that it was a fraudulent charge, I mean nothing happened but it got put into collections and shit.
 
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Hoss

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Bottom line is that it costs less for them to investigate than it does for them to take the charge up the ass. Actually, the CC companies don't even usually eat the charge. The vendors who accepted the bad card do. If there are big charges they have to eat, then they will investigate.

However, they do fully cooperate with any investigations that other people start.
 
AladainAF

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Guurn said:
Nope, you can have a package sent to a different address even if it is in transit. It just costs a little. I think it was UPS.
Click to expand...

Your friend is (most likely?) fucked, he's going to enjoy that you did that to him. The fact he paid to have it shipped to him, but at the same time having a charge reversed, is basically going to put him into a situation where he's going to owe the money + fees for the item - it's basically doing a charge back that was a legit charge. While it was not a legit charge from the start, the fact he intercepted it and got possession of the item would probably make it legit charge in the end, despite him not initiating it. I'm not a lawyer, though, so I could be offbase here.

If he wants to do the ethical thing, he should contact the CC company and tell them the situation about the seller refusing to help, and that since the package was already en route, he spent $12 of his money to intercept it so the actual thief didn't get possession of the item. Ask the CC company to verify the chargeback was complete, so he could return it to the originator. I bet after the charge back the "seller" is interested in getting that item back now and will play ball, and if your friend refuses to then he might get in trouble based on what the seller decides to do.

The reason I would inform the CC company about it is so they are kept in the loop since he has possession of the item right now. If the seller is filing a police report, and your friend has the item, that's a situation he won't want to be in. Note I don't think(?) this qualifies as credit card fraud, but it wouldn't surprise me if its not some type of fraud.
 
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Guurn

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The fraud department contacted him not long after i posted this and basically told him that there is no reason to contact them further regarding this matter. Incidentally he did try to return it but the seller wouldn't reply to his attempts to contact them. Yeah, i didn't do this to him idiot. He is still responsible for his actions. Sometimes i forget we live in an age that people blame others for their actions. He isn't that type of person. He is holding onto the watch in case they want something more.
 
Lanx

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Guurn said:
The fraud department contacted him not long after i posted this and basically told him that there is no reason to contact them further regarding this matter. Incidentally he did try to return it but the seller wouldn't reply to his attempts to contact them. Yeah, i didn't do this to him idiot. He is still responsible for his actions. Sometimes i forget we live in an age that people blame others for their actions. He isn't that type of person. He is holding onto the watch in case they want something more.
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lulz if the seller isn't responding, then he was in on it too.
 
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