12/14/2018 – How often do you check your bank balance?
Routinely, it is standard practice for us to check and balance our Owassoisms business account daily.
Today when checking it, the results were different. When signing in to our account, it had been drained dry in only 12 hours. Our business bank card had been duplicated, and used at businesses in California, Texas and Virginia simultaneously. This was with fake, physical cards, at brick and mortar businesses like SAM’s Club, not just by typing a number in for an online purchase.
A lot of the charges and attempted charges were at restaurants, all just under $200 and never over. I am sure there was a reason they kept them under the $200 mark, but not sure why exactly. Maybe the credit card company is less likely to go after them for an amount that is less than that. The assumption was they were not actual meal charges, but money being laundered, with cuts for all parties involved.
I rarely use that debit card, but the bank said it didn’t matter. She said they could have had my number for a year and just got around to using it. She said they could have got it anywhere. They could have purchased it, or even by just standing next to me and scanning it through my handbag. She said the buying and selling of numbers is big business. She said she deals with it every single day.
She also said laws have changed, to help with losses to businesses, especially when a physical card is used. She said these losses often fall back on the banking institution or the victim. #pleasedontfallbackonme
We are the smallest of small businesses. Obviously, this can and is devastating. Monitoring a police scanner for work, I hear credit card fraud calls almost daily. I never thought it could happen to us. I am always so careful, but it did.
So now we are hustling around, trying to figure out how to do things like pay employees (yep, its payday), reroute any incoming payments, and going to the bank to swear on the dotted line that I was not in 4 states at the same time using my card.
The likelihood the money will be put back in our account by the bank is high, but not guaranteed, and with no exact time frame. She said the Visa Debit system is getting extra tuff, especially when a physical card is used.
Regardless of the outcome, we will survive.
Long story short, don’t think it can’t happen to you, because it can. Keep close tabs on your accounts, and find out in advance what to do if the unthinkable happens.
