Great post, and something not many people consider when starting a startup. This happens with any mid-high ticket item you sell, unfortunately. I ran a hosting

Great post, and something not many people consider when starting a startup. This happens with any mid-high ticket item you sell, unfortunately. I ran a hosting company for 6 years and we had rampant fraud even back then. The "tells" were often the same--high-$ orders submitted by someone who hadn't talked to you first, etc. I do remember a couple of gems from my time running the company. Once, I had a friend who lived in the UK at the time call during UK business hours to verify that a customer had actually placed a large order. (This was back >10 years ago when calling the UK from the US was quite expensive--it was easier and cheaper to have my friend call!) It turned out the order was for real, and we got a happy new customer. On the flip side, we had a customer order and pay for a server for 6 months with no usage. Suddenly he started using it--for spam! Usually when this happens it means the server has been hacked. Not in this case, however. The dude was a bona fide spammer wanted by the FBI. We seized the server, called the FBI and reported it. The guy had the nerve to then charge back ALL of his 6 months of hosting through Amex. (Turns out that was part of the scam--Amex allows you to charge back exactly 6 months of purchases.) We filed a counterclaim with Amex, but they sided with him (any merchant who accepts Amex will not be surprised by that story.) We contacted Amex directly letting them know their card holder was a spammer, but he charged tens of thousands of dollars a month on the card and we got nowhere. I suspect in this day and age of social media, we would have gotten a lot farther with it. Years later, I heard Microsoft, of all companies, finally tracked him down and got him arrested: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18955115/ns/technology_and_science-security/t/one-worlds-top-spammers-held-seattle/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18955115/ns/technology_and_science... He had the nerve to use his real address with us, too, which I hope helped the FBI's case. I have the dubious honor of having talked to him on the phone when he was spitting mad after we shut his server down. There are some real whackjobs out there. Unfortunately, you'll often meet them when you run an online business.