I learned of this scam against credit cards while volunteering during my shift in the kitchen at our church’s bingo one night.
A small charge, an amount under a dollar up to a few dollars, appears on your credit card statement. Due to the insignificance of the amount, you don;t bother spending any time trying to figure out what it was for, and having it reversed off your account. You try and recall where the charge could have come from, perhaps an adjustment to a legitimate purchase.
I never thought much about thieves stealing million of credit card accounts, and simply charging a few dollars to each stolen account. But as it turns out, that’s exactly what they do, and a few dollars charged to millions of accounts, results in millions of dollars.
I went home that night and checked my credit card statements, and sure enough, I found these insignificant charges on my account. The total of them do not warrant my doing anything about it, but they are there. I’ll bet if you look, you’ll find them on yours as well.
Here’s the link to an article where the FTC just busted a very organized ring was stealing credit card accounts and doing this very scheme.
Tags: credit card, credit card fraud, fraud, identity theft
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