First time fraud victim.

[MagicJunkie]

Ever heard of this happening before?
My mother does not have internet, so she will sometimes use my connection and email address for purchases. Therefore, my email is linked with her credit card. Recently (this morning) I got an email thanking her for her purchase of 2 tickets (over $1,000) to a sports game. I had her call her credit card company immediately and they verified the charge was there and cancelled her card for her. She will call the ticket broker and notify them of the fraud. I hope that part is taken care of and done with. The questions I'm having now are........ How did her number get stolen along with my email? Why did the thief create an account to purchase these tickets using my email, allowing me to get the confirmation and link to download and print the tickets? I did not attempt to login to the account (the email does not give a password of course) but can this person still get the tickets without the link from the email? Will I get accused of buying them because it came to my email? Has this ever happened to anyone else?
Thanks in advance DISERS, you guys know everything.

 

[pioneer89]

There are dozens of ways that the thieves could get you and your mothers info. If she's made purchases with her credit card and used your email then you may never figure out when and how the info was lost.

I would NOT contact the company that sold the tickets without first talking to her credit card fraud department.

I suspect that the credit card company will remove the charge, but any contact you have with the ticket company will give them MORE info about you, in case they are the ones perpetrating the fraud. Even if they are 'honest', by selling tickets over the internet, they have to deal with fraud all the time, and I wouldn't doubt they use some strong-arm tactics to get people who were victims of fraud to pay up anyway.

As far as you and your mother are concerned, this should stay between you and the credit card company. If the ticket company gets involved, all they should here from you is: "I didn't order any tickets, I've never had any dealing with your company."

 

[MagicJunkie]

Oh dear, I bet she's on the phone with the ticket company as we speak. Her credit card company told her to notify them of the fraud and the cancellation of her card. What a nightmare! I hope they don't give her trouble.

 

[pioneer89]

Well, if the credit card company told her to do it, I guess it's ok, but it sure seems like the wrong way to handle it.

As far as you are concerned, the ticket broker themselves made an unauthorized charge to her card, THEY are the ones trying to take your money, and how or why they decided to do this is really not important as long as the charge is reversed. If called the broker up and said "I didn't order those tickets." they will try to get a LOT of info from you. I don't know your situation, but I can just see how this conversation would go with my DMIL:

DMIL: You placed a charge on my card for tickets I didn't order.
BROKER: Oh my, we need to get this straightened out right away. What is your full name and address so we can look up the order?
DMIL: Mary Jones, 1234 Main St.
BROKER: And what card was this put under, and what is the three digit number on the back?

Then ZING, if the broker is less than honest, they have my DMIL on tape sounding like she's ordering tickets.

Hopefully I'm just being paranoid, and this gets straightened out quickly and easily.

 

[MagicJunkie]

Just talked to her. They did make her nervous asking for the full name on the card and phone number, not sure if they asked for address. They said they would investigate and within 30 minutes they had called her back and said it was fraud and the charge would be refunded. They seemed surprised that her card had already been cancelled. I'm glad that's the first thing I told her to do.

 

[lovetoscrap]

I had my cc and email "stolen". They had my home address, email and cc number. I was pretty sure that it was the person that had taken an over the phone order from me at a legit company because that was the only use of that card in quite a while where all that information was in one place.

The cc company said that it appeared they were responding to a bunch of online pop ups like the ones that say "you have won an ipod, click here!". So they would enter my email and address and cc information. HUH??? So if they really got an ipod or other prize it would be sent to me??? So they assumed it was probably kids. It was all really, really strange. And in several of the cases they used my address/email and someone elses cc number. I did end up having several things come to me in the mail that they had "ordered" and I had to call several companies because they were subscription type things. I remember I got an Entertainment book, a box of something from Scholastic Books, and some sort of Postage thing from USPS, not sure what else. I stopped some of it before shipment because I got confirmation emails. All the things I received were marked "return to sender" and went back. I also filed a police report just so I had further proof of the problem in case I needed it since I was still getting lots of emails of stuff they were doing.

I still really don't understand what they were trying to do and how they were supposed to accomplish it. The biggest fallout was that because of what they did the email address now gets hundreds of spam crap a day. Fortunately my provider catches pretty much all of it so I have kept the email address, it is the one I use for all non personal (family and friends) use anyway.

 

[MagicJunkie]

Sounds like it caused you a lot of aggravation. I'm hopeful mine will not be as bad as that. I feel very lucky I caught it so quickly and my mom's credit card company got her taken care of. I did get an email from the ticket company saying they refunded the money due to fraud. I hope they delete the account that is now linked to my email address.