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I find it strange that the de-facto thing to do for fraud is to simply not accept the order. Why not report the fraud to authorities instead?

kogir 9y ago
Time. Nothing will come of it and it will cost you your wasted time.
michaelbuckbee 9y ago
Fraud falls into a weird category of crime where: - happens globally (far outside of local police jurisdiction) - per event small monetary value - widespread but difficult to tell how connected (is it tens of thousand of fraudulent events from a single actor or tens of thousands of different actors?) All of which adds up to there not being a clear cut law enforcement agency to handle these types of things (aka you can't reasonably ask the local police to help you track down a scammer in singapore).
- splonk 9y ago
  Yeah, essentially no local law enforcement is going to care about some guy successfully scamming you for a $100 chargeback. We were basically told not to bother for anything under $25k from a single actor, and even for amounts over that I think we only managed to get law enforcement action through personal contacts. I think the one case that law enforcement did act on was a group that was using a newly built neighborhood as a drop point for stolen goods. It was complete enough that there were addresses to ship to, but nobody was living there yet, so it was easy to just pick up packages off the front steps. From what I heard, the police ended up picking up some guy with a truck full of iPods who was just going house to house picking up the deliveries.
- chrischen 9y ago
  Yes I tried to report CC fraud (as a merchant) and the local departments kept bouncing me back and forth between my local police and the department at the fraudster’s jurisdiction. I had address, email, IP, and name, yet no one could do anything.
njarboe 9y ago
Would authorities in your jurisdiction do anything? Could they reasonably be able to do something? In my city a friend of mine had some checks stolen our of his car when he was out of town. The check info was used to pay for some utility bills. Reported to the police and no one gives a shit. The police know where the criminals live. They paid their electricity with it. Nothing done. Compared to online fraud this was a simple bust waiting to happen.
- jotm 9y ago
  Depending on where you live, if it's not a criminal offence, the police likely won't give a shit.
cortesoft 9y ago
What authorities should your report it to?
rossdavidh 9y ago
So, if you find the order suspicious enough that you would rather lose the order/customer than ship it and probably lose your money, you are probably still far short of the standard of proof which would allow anyone to get prosecuted for anything, even assuming that you could get law enforcement to investigate.
reaperducer 9y ago
I know someone who works at a place that gets ripped off to the tune of $50k+ each month. Police won’t do anything about it. Corporate tells them to just let it happen. Presumably, it all gets charged to insurance.
- Scoundreller 9y ago
  Likely they self-insure. Or they're a seller with higher prices that is willing to do the oh-so-dangerous thing known as international shipping. The hits make up for it. As a here-and-there Ebayer, I price things high and I'll ship to any developed country. My issues are mostly when shipping domestically.
nfriedly 9y ago
I occasionally wonder why Visa/Mastercard/etc don't make it easier to report suspected fraud directly to them. They're in an ideal position to 1) pro-actively notify the card owner and get them a new card, and 2) potentially give the authorities something more to work with than an individual store like Candy Japan.

kogir 9y ago

Time. Nothing will come of it and it will cost you your wasted time.

michaelbuckbee 9y ago

Fraud falls into a weird category of crime where: - happens globally (far outside of local police jurisdiction) - per event small monetary value - widespread but difficult to tell how connected (is it tens of thousand of fraudulent events from a single actor or tens of thousands of different actors?) All of which adds up to there not being a clear cut law enforcement agency to handle these types of things (aka you can't reasonably ask the local police to help you track down a scammer in singapore).

splonk 9y ago
Yeah, essentially no local law enforcement is going to care about some guy successfully scamming you for a $100 chargeback. We were basically told not to bother for anything under $25k from a single actor, and even for amounts over that I think we only managed to get law enforcement action through personal contacts. I think the one case that law enforcement did act on was a group that was using a newly built neighborhood as a drop point for stolen goods. It was complete enough that there were addresses to ship to, but nobody was living there yet, so it was easy to just pick up packages off the front steps. From what I heard, the police ended up picking up some guy with a truck full of iPods who was just going house to house picking up the deliveries.
chrischen 9y ago
Yes I tried to report CC fraud (as a merchant) and the local departments kept bouncing me back and forth between my local police and the department at the fraudster’s jurisdiction. I had address, email, IP, and name, yet no one could do anything.

njarboe 9y ago

Would authorities in your jurisdiction do anything? Could they reasonably be able to do something? In my city a friend of mine had some checks stolen our of his car when he was out of town. The check info was used to pay for some utility bills. Reported to the police and no one gives a shit. The police know where the criminals live. They paid their electricity with it. Nothing done. Compared to online fraud this was a simple bust waiting to happen.

jotm 9y ago
Depending on where you live, if it's not a criminal offence, the police likely won't give a shit.

cortesoft 9y ago

What authorities should your report it to?

rossdavidh 9y ago

So, if you find the order suspicious enough that you would rather lose the order/customer than ship it and probably lose your money, you are probably still far short of the standard of proof which would allow anyone to get prosecuted for anything, even assuming that you could get law enforcement to investigate.

reaperducer 9y ago

I know someone who works at a place that gets ripped off to the tune of $50k+ each month. Police won’t do anything about it. Corporate tells them to just let it happen. Presumably, it all gets charged to insurance.

Scoundreller 9y ago
Likely they self-insure. Or they're a seller with higher prices that is willing to do the oh-so-dangerous thing known as international shipping. The hits make up for it. As a here-and-there Ebayer, I price things high and I'll ship to any developed country. My issues are mostly when shipping domestically.

nfriedly 9y ago

I occasionally wonder why Visa/Mastercard/etc don't make it easier to report suspected fraud directly to them. They're in an ideal position to 1) pro-actively notify the card owner and get them a new card, and 2) potentially give the authorities something more to work with than an individual store like Candy Japan.