This information is not to be construed as business or legal advice, nor is it intended to offend any individual, group or country. It is offered merely as an informational guideline to our existing and potential clients.

Q:
Is there significant credit card fraud on the internet?

A:
For orders originating from certain "problem countries" and to a much lesser extent domestic orders, there is cause for concern. These tips are intended to help reduce or eliminate fraudulent activity.

General Tips:

1.) Educate yourself on fraudulent activity by reading this page and any other references you may find. Diligently check your orders and alert your personnel to be observant to suspicious situations.

2.) Use the Address Verification System (AVS) if your merchant account supports it (USA credit cards only). AVS will return an address match or mismatch. Be sure the digits in the street address and the digits in the zip code match the billing address of the cardholder. If a mismatch is returned, exercise caution and sound judgement.

3.) Add a message to the cart display that you are "fraud smart", and pursue fraudulent orders to the full extent of the law. A message as simple as "We screen diligently for credit card fraud " may be enough to cut fraud attempts in half.

4.) Do not accept international credit card orders over $250 without completing ALL investigative steps below. Do not accept large dollar amount credit card orders under any circumstances. Telephone domestic buyers who order over $250.

5.) Be careful of REMAILING SERVICES! There are places in the USA which will remail packages to overseas destinations. Here is an address actually used in a fraud: 7801 N.W. 37th STREET Suite 179AX9CO in Miami at zip 33166. See the "Suite 179AX9CO"? That's an account number, which in that case goes to an address in Columbia (which we inferred from the order IP address). Tip #8 below would have caught this fraud.

6.) Be careful of Hotel addresses. A good trick to catch those is to search Google for the numeric street address, street name, and zip. Most lodging addresses are on the web these days, so you can find these.

Geographical Tips:

The vast majority of orders from the following countries are FRAUDULENT:

• Romania
• Indonesia
• Singapore (see note below)
• Ghana (a rising star of fraud!)
• Ukraine
• Uganda
• Nigeria
• Hungary
• Belarus
• Estonia
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Slovak Republic
• Russia
• Yugoslavia
• Macedonia
• Phillipines
• Thailand
• Malaysia (see note below)

Note on Singapore & Maylasia: People in Indonesia use Singapore or Maylasia as the destination Country name, and still get the package because Singapore/Maylasia Postal Service figures out where to send it.

Our advice is to just not ship to any of these countries. In the long haul, you will lose money.

The following countries are on the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanction list:

• Cuba
• Iran
• Iraq
• North Korea
• Libya
• Sudan

Other countries, regimes, and people are listed also, with varying sanctions. A good document outlining corporate responsibility regarding this topic is http://www.treas.gov/ofac/t11facei.pdf.

Suspicious Signs Of CC Fraud:

1.) Shopper is unconcerned with shipping costs. Most legitimate shoppers are very sensitive to shipping costs. A "please expedite and add the extra onto my card" with no maximum or qualifying comment or question may be a tip-off: Use Caution.

2.) Very large dollar amount order or large quantity. Thieves need to score quickly and move on since fraudulent delivery addresses have a short lifespan, at least in the USA. They will try to hit a perfect spot where the order is big enough to profit them, but small enough NOT to make merchants suspicious. Sometimes they will aim for $500+ orders, other times try to stay in the $199 range.

3.) Ship-to address is not the same as the billing address. There are many legitimate reasons for a shopper wanting to do this, but it is a "cheat" of the AVS system if the thief has the billing address of the real cardholder.

4.) Shopper email is undeliverable. Americart sends out an email acknowledgement to the shopper when an order is placed, and we have the "from" address set to be your address. If that message is undeliverable, it will typically bounce back to you. It could be an innocent typographical error, or it could be a fraudulent order. You can send a message yourself if you don't have "email confirmation" enabled in your cart.

Investigative Tips Regarding Suspicious Order:

1.) For an overseas order, check to see if they are using a US bank card number. Call your card processor's customer service line and give them the first six numbers of the card in question. That is the "bin" number, or bank identification number. Many stolen card numbers are USA cards. If overseas order and "bin" is a US bank, it may be a stolen card.

2.) Email the shopper and request the bank name printed on the card. Most thieves will not reply, assuming that you are "fraud smart", and will have caught on to them. When they do send it, verify with your processor that the bank name is correct. Sometimes the processor won't be able to identify a foreign bank. You can also ask for the 1-800 number on the back of the card; you can then call the bank and ask them to call their customer to verify the charge legitimacy. They will do this gladly in most cases.

3.) Email the shopper and ask for their expiration month again, stating it did not come through in the order. Frauds will often not keep track of which of the several cards they were ordering with that day that they used on a given site, and so will not be able to repeat the information accurately.

4.) Tell them you have their "widget" in stock, and ask if they want a "gadget" to go with that, for only $200 more. Phrase this appropriately to avoid annoying legitimate shoppers. A crook, if monitoring their bogus email box at all, will say "sure!", without even a question. This should raise red flags.

5.) Call the phone number given in the order. It may be entirely bogus, and sometimes it is even the actual number of the person whose card was stolen. If you don't get a phone number with the order, write and ask for one.

6.) If it is a separate billing/shipping situation, send a paper receipt or "thank you card" to the billing address immediately, and include instructions to call you if the letter reached them in error. Try to avoid shipping the product until the letter has time to get to the billing address for the credit card.

7.) Begin a dialogue. Think of some reason to contact the shopper to ask about colors or sizes, etc. Do not be too specific about what the product is or available colors/sizes. Often a thief is on a "shopping spree", and won't even remember who you are or what they ordered from you. After all, they just ordered from 15 websites that day. A legitimate shopper will know EXACTLY what they ordered, and have definite choices in mind.

8.) Check the order origin using the IP number included in the order. Look up IP numbers in the ARIN system. One ploy that some Indonesian crooks are using is to have delivery to a USA address where their friend is waiting to grab the package. They will often place the order over the internet from Indonesia, and you can find that out. Enter this IP number into the arin system referenced above: 203.130.216.56

Notice that this particular IP number is under "Asia Pacific Network Information Center"? Why would someone in California be placing their order through an APNIC IP number? That's a big red flag! Other international crooks besides Indonesia have "friends" in the USA also, so be careful.