About a year ago, my Credit institution called me and asked me if I’ve made any large purchases in the last three days. I said no, and they immediately deactivated my card. Through out the week, I had to fill out and fax a few forms back and forth, to reclaim the $1000 stolen from my debit card. On the forms, there was some legal jargon about them going after those that did this to me. Although I’m happy that my bank refunded all of my money back, I wonder, did they every go after and prosecute the offenders? I never heard back from them, and I really never hear about offenders getting caught. The same thing happened with my fathers card about 2 years before that. On his card, a cable subscription was purchased, as well as an AOL account. Now wouldn’t that be easy to find them? I mean they have a frickin’ cable account paid for with stolen credit information, certainly there’s an address? He never heard back from them about that. So, how are these people caught, if ever? Does the FBI come down on them or what? Do they do time, or get probation?
From my experience with credit card fraud (one relative obtained fraudulent card using another relative’s credit information), the companies prefer restitution to prosecution. I spoke with the issuing agency and was advised that their involvement would be limited to, if the defrauded person followed up, transfer the account to the person who opened it fraudelently (and cancel it) and remove it from the victim’s credit report. Any criminal charges would have to come from the victim.
This was several years ago so there may have been some change since then.
So your saying that it’s pretty much not worth their time to peruse these asshats? Because really, if the bank is paying me back, the asshats are stealing from the bank itself. I would think they would go after them. Maybe some do, some don’t.
Most company detectives have what’s called a “floor limit.” If a fraud incident fails to exceed the “floor limit”, which can be in the hundreds of dollars, the detective had orders to simply file the situation away in company records.
If the fraud incident exceeds the floor limit, he has a certain amount of time he is allowed to devote to the incident, based in part on the size of the scam.
If some random person halfway across the country or around the world just scammed the bank for $1000, then he won’t be authorized to give chase by flying to the opposite coast and knocking on doors.
I’ll point out that if your bank had just gotten scammed out of let’s say… a half of a million ($500,000) US dollars, their reaction might be quite different. They very well might chase every single lead available, to the extent that they had manpower needed to do so.
On a slightly different topic, I DO NOT think that your bank actually lost money. I would imagine that what they’ll do is demand the sales receipts and/or shipping information from the vendors your scammer bought from.
Once the signatures or shipping address fail to match yours, the merchant, not the bank, will be on the hook. Under the uniform commercial code (UCC), the party in the best position to prevent the scam is left holding the bag. In this case, whatever merchant handed out merchandise without checking signatures or verifying shipping address will wind up NOT getting the check he was supposed to from the credit card company for that merchandise.
Sucks to be that merchant.
My sympathies to you, too. Identity theft is a pain in the keister, and I can certainly identify with the hassle you’re going through right now.
I had 2 credit cards in a row sent to my college mailbox stolen by postal staff employed at the university, then activated, then used. It was a little bit of a hassle.
The banks don’t go after them because they pass the loss onto the merchant where the stolen credit card was used. Its up to the merchants (as the victims) to pursue it and work with law enforcement to put the perpetrators in jail.
Its rare but sometiimes the criminals are arrested. Usually with stolen credit card numbers, the people using them are overseas so there’s not much local LE can do. FBI, US Customs and US Postal Inspectors have more success.
My company sells software online and about 4 times now in the past 3 years we’ve had to refund money to the credit card once it was reported as stolen. So the card holder’s bank got their $$, we were out $$ (luckilly it is just downloadable software, no overhead involved (other than my time #@#%%!!!)) and no one ever asked us anything more about the fraud (our bank or theirs).
Why people would use a stolen CC to buy my cheapass software, I’ll never know.
As Jonathan Woodall points out: a.) regarding the floor limits, it’s not worth it to spend $2000 to get $1000 back and b.) the cc companies have the merchants to eat the loss.
In my experience, even without much expense to identify and prosecute, financial institutions will choose restitution first. Once upon a time I received a bank statement that revealed that someone had stolen several checks from the back of my checkbook (that kept me from noticing right away, and the bank from noticing wildly out of order check numbers). While I immediately suspected one person, the fact that the last of the checks was made out to this person clinched it.
The bank pretty much had him. He’d stolen $800, which was a significant amount 30 years ago when this happened. They gave him 24 hours to pay back the money and they wouldn’t prosecute. There’s no telling what he did to whom in the following 24 hours, but he beat that one.
My big sis (*disclaimer - I’m adopted!!) stole some poor old lady’s credit card and racked up about $800.00 on it. She was caught. They wanted her to pay restitution and do 100 hours (or something like that, not sure of exact amount) of community service. She never did her community service, so she ended up in jail for 30 days. :rolleyes:
My BIL runs a small store has had to deal with credit card fraud all the time.
In one case, he was able to personally track down, find the names, addresses, etc. of the crooks. He gave all the information to the police. They refused to do anything. A “small” $500 con job wasn’t worth their time.
Of course, that means that crooks can make a decent living stealing “small” amounts. The police just can’t get their minds around “throwing this one jerk in jail will stop hundreds of crimes”.
So, based on my BIL’s experience, it’s not the banks or the merchants, it’s the local cops which allow such crimes to go unpunished.
Usually, wide spread fruad is pursued. Nigerian scammers and others tie up so many resources that the nickel and dime guys are not pursued.
There are so many levels of fraud that it is very difficult, just as with other types of crime, to hunt down everyone.
Also, the nature of ID theft means that it is hard. You use their ID…their fingerprint in the electronic world. Like using their face and body to rob a bank.