Here’s a reminder to everyone looking for a job or for a side hustle in addition to their current job: as tempting as it may sound, receiving a check and depositing it is not a legitimate way to make money. You might have heard this before, but if no one fell for this scam, it would die out. [More]
fraud
$18 Million WIC And Food Stamps Fraud Scheme Used Pretend Grocery Stores
By 6.12.14
WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) and SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) are both federally-funded, state-administered programs with the simple goal of preventing Americans from going hungry. In Georgia, 54 people have been indicted for setting up pretend grocery stores that defrauded the programs of millions of dollars. [More]
Watch Out For Card Skimmers On Post Office Kiosks
By 5.13.14
Automated Postal Centers (APCs) are kiosks that are available when post office lines are too long, the service counter is closed, or you want to avoid bothersome human interaction. They’re set up very much like ATMs that print postage instead of dispensing cash. Like any other machine that accepts debit cards and is accessible to the public, APCs have been the target of card-skimming scammers. [More]
Tax Refund Fraudsters May Have Targeted Physicians
By 4.22.14
Plenty of Americans don’t file their tax returns until the very last week: it’s just human nature. We shared scary warnings many times before this year’s April 15 deadline that fraudsters are filing Americans’ returns before they do, harvesting their refunds. Some even scarier news (if you’re a health care provider) broke today: some state medical societies report outbreaks of tax return scams among their members. [More]
Sally Beauty Credit Card Breach Could Include 280,000 Card Numbers
By 3.25.14
Sally Beauty Supply admitted that about 25,000 credit card numbers were compromised when they were hacked earlier this year, but there’s evidence that the breach was much, much larger than that. Security reporter Brian Krebs is the person who first reported the extent of the 2013 Target breach, and he thinks that there could be a lot more compromised numbers than Sally will admit. It could be eleven times as many. [More]
Card Canceled After Target Data Breach Hit With Fraudulent Charge Anyway
By 3.12.14
The massive holiday season Target data breach is the gift that just keeps on giving consumers more headaches. Replacing a compromised card may not be enough to prevent fraud, it turns out: criminals may still be able to charge purchases to your old account even if you thought it was closed. [More]
Visa, MasterCard To End Swipe-And-Sign By 2015
By 2.7.14
Goodbye credit card signatures and hello PIN numbers. In a move that could better protect consumers from massive security breaches, major credit card companies are looking to implement a chip-and-PIN system instead of the tired and true swipe-and-sign method used across the country. [More]
JPMorgan Chase To Pay $614M In Settlement For Defrauding Federal Agencies
By 2.5.14
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is running up quite the legal tab this year. On Tuesday, that tab grew by $614 million when the company agreed to settle its latest legal woe with the U.S. government. [More]
Taco Bell Franchisee Doesn’t Tell Social Security About Dead Mom For 23 Years, Collects $200K
By 1.13.14
In the process of dealing with the death of a parent, it might be forgivable if you overlook some paperwork and the Social Security folks send out a benefits check meant for the deceased. But when you deliberately hide this death for two decades while collecting nearly $200,000 that doesn’t belong to you, you’re probably going to jail. [More]
The Gift Card I Bought At Walmart Is Blank. What Should I Do?
By 1.7.14
If you buy a prepaid debit card at Walmart as a gift and only receive a blank Starbucks card in return, who is responsible for getting you your money back? One family in California learned a very inconvenient lesson: customers who buy empty gift cards must go to the company that issued the gift card, not Walmart. [More]
Christmas Gift Of iPod Was Actually A Box Filled With Erasers
By 12.27.13
One San Diego man obviously isn’t a regular Consumerist reader. He bought his wife an iPod for Christmas, and she opened it up to find…four erasers and some specially-cut index cards filling up the spot that’s supposed to cradle the iPod. They’re probably very nice erasers, but you can’t play music on them. Light percussion, maybe. [More]
Fraudsters Hit My Social Security Payment. Now What?
By 10.10.13
Social Security “checks” are no longer a thing. People who receive retirement, disability, or death benefits have to get them through direct deposit or a debit card. What happens when fraudsters strike and that money goes missing from the card? Too bad for you, apparently. That’s what one retiree learned when $824 in charges she didn’t make disappeared from her debit card. [More]
Bloomingdale’s Doesn’t Want You Returning That Dirty Dress After The Party’s Over
By 9.17.13
While it’s a blessing for many shoppers that some retailers have very forgiving return policies, other customers have stretched companies like Bloomingdale’s to the limit with the practice known as “wardrobing”: Buying an item of clothing, wearing it once and then returning it with the tags still on. It’ll be a lot harder to do that at Bloomie’s soon, unless your idea of a party outfit is showcasing large, plastic tags on your garment. [More]
Tiny Bluetooth Gas Pump Skimmers Are Here To Gobble Your Credit Card Info
By 7.30.13
In the above picture, on the left you see a brand-new credit/debit card for gas pumps. On the right is the same device with a card-skimming device placed in the conveniently empty slot. How can consumers avoid having their card information skimmed by crooks using similar devices? You probably won’t even know until the fraudulent purchases hit your account. [More]
Fraud Suspect Thought Paying For Fingerprints With Stolen Credit Card Was A Good Idea
By 7.12.13
Perhaps you’ve heard that the worst thing a criminal can do is return to the scene of the crime, and yet time and time again, that caveat proves too tempting to ignore for many a bad consumer. One man charged with fraud learned that he should’ve paid attention to that societal maxim while doing what the court told him to. [More]
Rakuten Is Taking Credit Card Fraud Complaints Very Seriously
By 6.10.13
For a few months now, customers of Rakuten (formerly Buy.com here in the USA) have complained that large and unauthorized purchases have showed up on their credit cards not long after making purchases on the site. Frustrated consumers have taken to the Web to complain and to demand answers. [More]
Here’s Everything We Know About The Rakuten/Buy.com Credit Card Breaches
By 6.6.13
Starting about a month ago, rumblings began on the SlickDeals forums among people who had recently made purchases from Rakuten Shopping, the new brand name of the marketplace Buy.com. The purchases made were diverse, ranging from time clocks in Colombia to newspaper subscriptions in Cleveland to plane tickets in Germany. Something is very, very wrong here: hundreds of victims from recent months have come forward on Slickdeals alone. [More]
Protect Your Credit And Debit Accounts When You Travel
By 5.31.13
The summer travel season is here, which means driving and flying to new locales and using exciting and unfamiliar ATMs. That increases your risk of both having awesome fun times and of being the victim of credit or debit card fraud, so it’s good to keep that in mind and take a few precautions. [More]
