Miata Mailing List: July 1999, Message #1135

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Very elaborate, obviously fictious story. Do you really think the gas 
station worker would attract attention by calling in the "missing card"  At 
most he could complete one scam cycle then be easily caught. There are much 
easier ways to steal. This story is so full of holes...

Who cares anyway? Liability is only $50 and 99% of times this will be 
waived.

But the really stupid thing a consumer can do is to accept a visa-debit 
card. Banks are pushing these hard as it pushes liability onto the customer. 
Ss someone else pointed out, the visa-debit card can drain your bank account 
quickly if on the wrong hands. Banks love these as they don't have to give 
you the 25 day float, nor do the same consumer protection laws apply.

To be honest, if you use a visa-debit card rather than a regular credit card 
you are an idiot and will get scammed during your life one way or another.

In general don't worry about CC scams. You have very little liability, it 
might give you a headache and waste some time, but not near as much  as 
you'll waste by reading fictious stories about CC scams.

The above applies to the US market only.

DB


>From: "April & Richard" <benpril@erols.com>
>Reply-To: "April & Richard" <benpril@erols.com>
>To: Multiple recipients of list <miata@list.miata.net>
>Subject: Another Gas Station Credit Card Scam to watch for...(nmc)
>Date: Fri, 9 Jul 1999 21:22:32 -0400
>
>I am a manager for a major credit card issuer (does that make me a bad
>person??) and a fellow manager in our security/fraud investigations
>department shared the following gas station scam with me recently. It is
>more complicated than the average 'take your card and run it up' scenarios.
>It goes as follows:
>
>1.Consumer visits full serve gas station and pays with credit card.
>2. Attendant pumps gas, processes charge correctly but fails to return card
>3. Consumer fails to notice card not returned
>4. Attendant immediately calls credit card issuer to report the card was
>left there. In an effort to
>     fight fraud, most companies thank the merchant and just go ahead and
>status the account as
>    lost.
>5. Attendant takes card and puts it in a file to be held for a few weeks.
>6. Attendant takes from that same file a card that was obtained the same 
>way
>a few weeks before that.
>     At this point, the card the attendant is taking has been closed for a
>while and the consumer has been contacted and has verified that no fraud
>charges have been made on the account. They have also received a new card
>and account.
>7. Attendant maintains the previously lost card in his pocket until another
>consumer patrons the full serve pump and offers a credit card from the same
>company as payment. A card that looks EXACTLY like the one in the 
>attendants
>pocket.
>8. Attendant pumps gas and processes the charge correctly, but instead of
>giving the consumer back their card, he slips them the previously obtained,
>now statused lost card. If the consumer notices, the attendant says "oops,
>sorry......let me go get your card" and gives them back their card. No loss
>no gain.
>9. If the consumer does not notice they received the wrong card, they take
>it, put it away and drive off.
>10. Attendant now has a valid, usable credit card with which he can then 
>use
>at his leisure or in extreme cases turn in to someone who is running a
>network.
>11. Attendant uses card to max out the limit everywhere EXCEPT at his gas
>station.
>12. Once finished with card, either discard it or place it in the file for
>use in a couple of months once the credit card company has written off the
>loss.
>
>By the time you realize you have someone elses card in your wallet it could
>be days or weeks.  Eventually, the card issuer gets enough accounts with 
>the
>last valid charge being that particular gas station and they figure it out
>but it takes a while and even if they do figure it out......it is pretty
>much too late.
>
>Another twist is that instead of the attendant processing an actual charge
>against the account while trying to obtain the card, they process it for
>cash, make a dummy receipt for the consumer and then do the whole cycle.
>When they do it this way.......there is not way to trace it back to the
>station.
>
>The moral of the story???????? PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU GET YOUR CARD BACK and
>be aware when you using your credit card. Most of the people that commit
>credit card fraud are pretty crafty.
>
>Richard Norman
>
>
>


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