Raspberry Ketone Strength Scam?

I’m writing this hoping other people will come forward with similar stories. (Don’t forget to read the important updates at the end of this post. Additionally, I’ve written out a strategy that will likely help track these scammers down faster.) On 9/16/2014, Josh, a former agent at the “customer service company” at the center of this scam responded.

Yesterday, 8/13/2014, I logged in and checked my credit card statement like I do routinely. I noticed an odd authorization for $49.95 from 888-368-0967.com. This was suspicious because I did not recently buy anything for $49.95 and had never heard of that company.

Visiting the site did not help either. It appears to be a third party site that provides the customer service and, apparently, billing for other websites online.

So I called the number and ended up speaking to two different customer service representatives, who were both very friendly. After explaining the charge appearing out of nowhere on my credit card I was asked to provide a few digits from my credit card number. I did that and my name was verified by them. Kind of weird that my real name was associated with that number in their database but whatever.

I was told that yes, a $49.95 charge was placed on that card on 8/10/2014. (It must have taken a few days to transfer over to my credit card company.) They told me that the Raspberry Ketone Strength vitamins would be arriving shortly.

Woah! Hold on there. Raspberry ketones? I even had to have the rep spell it out for me because he had a slight accent and that’s something you don’t hear in everyday conversation. What the heck are those? I have never even heard of them, let alone buy them!

I then asked him to give me the shipping address. I was planning on giving this information to the credit card fraud department to hopefully catch the criminal. Weirdly enough the agent proceeded to give me my own address! What craziness is this? Why would someone order these weight-loss “vitamins” in my name, using my credit card number, and then ship it to my actual address?

It doesn’t make any sense. If my card number was auto-generated and then used for this purchase, why would my real name and address be used? Wouldn’t the thief want the product shipped to his own address or at least a PO Box that he could secretly pick it up at? Seems like a lot of work just to pick up a 2-month supply of this stuff.

The first customer service representative I spoke with told me that he’d cancel the order. He offered no explanation of how or why this charge happened in the first place since “[they] are only a third-party.” I told him that regardless of canceling the order I still would be talking to my credit card company to dispute the charge.

Next, I did call my credit card company and reported what I described above. Their agent said that she saw the charge and noted that it was allowed to go through because the name and shipping address matched what they had on record for me. She said that my call was documented and that I could dispute the charge if the billing company did not cancel it themselves.

Then I realized that maybe the criminal used a different email address so that he could watch the shipment tracking and possibly intercept the package when it arrived at my door. I called the billing company back and spoke with a second customer service representative.

This new guy told me that they only had my name and address (and credit card number) on record but that there was no associated email address. Dang, there goes that theory! He then said that my product would be arriving in only a few days.

What? I thought the last guy canceled it! Turns out my auto-renewing account was canceled but that the product was still on the way! That was not what I wanted. The rep then told me that when I received the package and did not want it I could send it back with the RMA number he was about to give me. I was not going to do that. I told him that I’d be refusing the package and would dispute the charge with my credit card company regardless. I did not want to deal with an RMA number.

He then talked to his supervisor who did authorize a refund of the $49.95 charge. Supposedly that could take up to 5-10 business days. I also received a cancellation number. Seems fairly legit. I’ll closely be watching my credit card statement for that refund and will be updating this post with any new development.

Has anyone else experienced anything similar?

I’m at loss for an explanation. The Raspberry Ketone Strength website and terms and conditions isn’t helpful. There’s no contact information other than the number for the third party billing company. The only company name is listed as “Puerto Quellon LP.”

A quick Google search of that name does, in fact, bring up something similar. There’s a single recent mention of an entry on Ripoff Report describing a company trying to charge someone a monthly $49.95 to his bank card, which is directly connected to his checking account. (At least in my situation it goes through my credit card, which has better fraud/dispute resolution.)

This guy feels that the Puerto Quellon LP company must have gotten his details from his Amazon account.

I have bought a number of things recently from third party sellers (which were managed through Amazon). Everyone of them has good reviews and the products arrived correctly and in good condition.

The only thing that I can think of is that this Raspberry Ketone Strength company aka Puerto Quellon LP has fraudulently charged my credit card themselves. Not as many people go to the extreme that I have in tracking them down. Scamming the credit card companies out of a little money here and there might be their business model. Maybe the $49.95 charge is too small for the credit card companies to spend the time and money to pursue? This is all just entirely speculation, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Update (8/17/2014): Just checked my credit card statement and the billing company I called did keep their word. The $49.95 charge has been credited back to the account. I’ll be watching my credit statement even closer for the next few months because this does still seem kind of fishy.

Update (8/28/2014): I did a Google search and found another website discussing the exact same thing.

Also, an article from none other than the Cosmopolitan UK describes how people in the UK are finding it very difficult to cancel their trial of the product once they order it. There was an email address listed at the end of the article for victims to email in order to stay apprised of any potential court proceedings. I’ll post updates here if I hear back.

Update (9/2/2014): Andrew suggested that the scheme involves setting up a fake merchant account using stolen credit card information. What happens is that the relatively small charge is cleared by your bank because the name and address are correctly provided. Then, if you happen to notice the charge and call to cancel, the money is refunded. This sounds okay, but this actually allows the scam to keep going. What should be done instead is to keep the charge on the account, dispute it and get the chargeback, allowing the bank’s fraud department to track it down. Once more people do this, then the appropriate authorities will shut them down. Thanks, Andrew!

Update (9/11/2014): Thanks to everyone that has commented so far. Hopefully this blog and comments have been helpful in clarifying this scam and, if nothing else, letting other people know that they are not alone in this. In the comments Patricia has posted a good email that she is using to alert her friends. People have also been contacting various news agencies. Paul suggested contacting the Internet Crime Complaint Center (www.ic3.gov).

I’d also like to suggest a new strategy:
Many of us have actually, believe it or not, had success in calling the 888 number (the “third party” billing company) and asking for a refund. Now that I have read through the advice of commenters who deal with this kind of stuff in their professions, I think the strategy should be to not ask for a refund. As Andrew said (see 9/2/2014 update above), this only legitimizes them and allows them to keep the scam going. Instead, we should cancel the card and dispute the charge with our credit card company or bank. That way the big banks and their fraud departments will be the ones scrambling to find these scammers. As soon as we dispute the charge the $49.95 will be deposited back into our account since we have zero liability.

Update (9/16/2014): Please see the comment by Josh. He is a former employee of this “customer service company” and describes how the scam works. Very interesting and informative comment. He sounds like a great resource! Thanks for the message, Josh!

260 thoughts on “Raspberry Ketone Strength Scam?

  1. Josh

    I don’t know if this business is going down but I recently heard that this company had fired so many people lately however, It goes on normally and I was told that they would change the product so another product instead of raspberry ketone but the same scam. It had happened a few years ago as well that they used another product to defraud.
    I think It must be hard to stop them because there isn’t so much which your institutions could do as they aren’t in the USA. Why don’t you try to contact the consulate or the embassy of The United States in Costa Rica http://costarica.usembassy.gov/ or even the consulates or the embassy of Costa Rica in The United States? Any of these institutions can probably help you with something. There’s a link here with the consulates in different U.S. states and the embassy which is located in Washington, DC. http://costarica.com/embassy/

  2. Wil

    The real business won’t be going down. None of the products are real, although they are named close to real products to seem ligit. No real products – no real companies producing them. The only real company is the “Customer Support” company. So maybe “Raspberry Ketone Strength” and “Puerto Quellon LP” disappear. Change the name of the product to “Cherry/Apple Muscle Magic” with a company name of “St. Joseph Micro-Biologicals” and run that until too many get wise to it. Just so happens they use “Customer Support Corp,” to handle their customer relations.

    The “Customer Support” telephone numbers used for the charges on my card are still up and running. Only the product and company names they represent are changed to protect the guilty.

  3. Wil

    UPDATE – For instance
    “Raspberry Ketone Strength” is now “Raspberry Health” 1-888-445-8318 (Information given to me inadvertently by the “Customer Support” crew.)

    Another “Support”company was acrsupport.com phone number unknown
    is now supportacr.com 1-888-838-8540

    There is a legitimate company ACR ARTEX , acrartex.com, that makes/sells legitimate aircraft equipment

    Another fraud naturalfatburngarcinia.com 1-888-409-9524

    All of the phone numbers listed above go to the same “Customer Support” boiler room. They are all phony products and businesses generated solely for the purpose of posting fraudulent charges using information from stolen credit cards. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of these frauds put out there by this company.

  4. Wil

    Another FYI
    I called every number listed by AV on 9/24/14. He calls them the call centers (plural). Every one of those numbers, even the ones he has noted as “no longer,” goes to the same call center except the 888-719-8898 number, which goes to a legitimate business, Ocracoke Island Realty Vacation
    Rentals.

    All of these frauds are being run by the same company in the background. The front companies are all fake.

  5. Scott

    @Wil, Wow! Sounds very similar to the scam that we have all been affected by. Maybe the FBI will actually take this seriously and put a stop to it.

  6. Matthew

    Wil, thanks for that link to the FBI story. Sounds a lot like “our” scam except that the perps were in the U.S. If they really are in Costa Rica, it will be very hard for the FBI to do anything without the cooperation of the Costa Rican government. However, I did report my experience to the tips web page you posted.

  7. Patricia

    A couple of weeks ago, I posted my fraud story on the FBI’s tips page. Last week, I reported this fraud (via email) to the U. S. Embassy in Costa Rica and the Costa Rica Embassy in Washington, DC, asking them to forward it to Costa Rica’s FBI equivalent.

  8. Josh

    Patricia, there’s a really important newspaper in English here, for the American Expats living in Costa Rica. Try to send them an email with everything what you know so far and to see if they might bring it out in order to spread the word. http://www.ticotimes.net/about

  9. Patricia

    Josh, thanks for yet another great lead! I have done as you suggested (visited http://www.ticotimes.net/about) and sent a news tip to: David Boddiger (news) dboddiger@ticotimes.net. As a U. S. citizen, it is my duty to do everything possible to warn people about this scam and how it operates. Although this may be an unrealistic expectation, I and other victims would like to see CRI Online Sales S.A. raided by the Costa Rica police and the supervisors/managers arrested and interrogated, so the identity(ies) of any Americans involved in this criminal enterprise can be ascertained. Without Costa Rica’s direct involvement and cooperation with the FBI, I fear there is little that can be done stateside to stop this scam/crime. Our collective desire is that all of the criminals associated with this scam/crime will be apprehended, prosecuted, and their scam operation permanently shut down. Thanks again!

  10. AV

    Patricia & others,
    With all the non-transparancy after reporting, I don’t know where in the path the investigation is with law enforcement.

    Has a report been filed with your local Police Department? And, who would the local PD suggest contacting?

    On the Costa Rico end it seems the San Jose Organismo de Investigacion Judicial (O.I.J. ) is the local police (506) 2222-1365 or (506) 2221-5337. I don’t know; but the report may not be accepted since your not on San Jose soil.

    Integrates:
    Fraudes – Fraud
    Delitos Económicos y Financieros – Financial and economic crime

  11. Matthew

    AV, with regard to reporting it to my local police department, I have not, but I suspect that would be a useless exercise. Why? Because many of us got refunds by calling the Customer Service number ourselves, and more of us were refunded the money by our bank who then pursued getting the money back from the Customer Service people on our behalf. Since we have therefore suffered no actual monetary loss, I can’t imagine that a local police department (or in my case a county sheriff’s department) with actual local crimes to deal with is going to spend time on a complaint against a Costa Rican company that didn’t even actually get any money out of me!

  12. AV

    Matthew, from what I understand, it was a fraud charge in the first instance, without customer approval. It seems to be intentional fraud, has been going on for months, with multiple fraud payments to more than one person’s payment card, and using leaked payment card numbers and other details that is not supposed to be leaked. Perhaps it’s not at all similar; but for ID Theft a local PD report is used as an official report to provide to other organizations–it’s simply an official report and as far as I know doesn’t go further.

  13. Patricia

    As far as reporting this to local police, I have to agree with Matthew. For the record, I did attempt several times to send an email alert about this scam/crime to the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica and the Costa Rica Embassy in Washington, D.C. All, but one, came back marked “undeliverable.” The addresses that aborted were: consulate@costarica-embassy.org; embassy@costarica-embassy.org; concr-us-wa@rree.go.cr. The email that appeared to go through was addressed to: commercial@usembassy.or.cr. And, the email that I sent yesterday to dboddiger@ticotimes.net in Costa Rica was successfully delivered.

  14. Wil

    I live in a small (population wise <30,000) county with a small sheriff's department covering a large physical area. Can this sheriff with limited manpower and budget do anything substantial about this fraud. Probably not. But I reported it to them any way. Why?

    I had two fraudulent charges posted. One was refunded, the other was not after contacting the "company." Whether a refund was obtained is not, IMO, significant. The charges were fraudulent.

    In all advice given the first step is usually "report it to your local police agency." This establishes that you seriously believe it to be a fraud. Also, at least in my case, when you call your credit card agency/bank a couple of their first questions will be, "Have you reported it to the police?" and, "What is the report number?" That you have is an indication that YOU are not trying to scam the bank. A false police report would, in itself, be a pretty serious offense.

    So, yes, report to your local police. If nothing else it helps establish your own credibility.

  15. AV

    Patrica, the section of the Embassy I found closest to financial fraud is below. But, it doesn’t seem to be a service of that section, or any other section, to receive US citizen reporting of financial fraud.
    http://costarica.usembassy.gov/rso.html

    (There is a contact email address on the right side of the page.)

  16. Scott

    Hey guys!

    The site is back up and running. Sorry about that! Turns out I had auto-pay hooked up to the card I canceled because of this Raspberry Ketone scam thing. It was the only (hopefully) thing that I still had on auto-pay with the old card.

    I had to pay slightly more than usual to get it back up and running, but it should be all good for now.

  17. Patricia

    Woo-Hoo! … We’re back online! … Way to go, Scott! … UPDATE: Wil, having reconsidered your reasoning, I have filed a “courtesy report” with the Sheriff’s Dept. in the county where I live and in the county where I work. A deputy in the county where I live called to acknowledge receipt of my email report, to thank me for the information, and to confirm that this is definitely a case for the FBI. It also occurred to me that, thanks to today’s advanced technology, the Sheriff’s Dept. would have better ways and means to expedite delivery of our complaint reports to the FBI.

  18. Matthew

    Scott wrote: “The site is back up and running. Sorry about that! Turns out I had auto-pay hooked up to the card I canceled because of this Raspberry Ketone scam thing.”

    Well that’s pretty ironic!

  19. Duluth

    I wonder how these scammers got the card # in the first place? This happened to me and I’m not sure how. As far as I know my charge has not been stolen. I did a charge back but then this month I have another fraud charge for $49.95. This time it’s from “GarciniaDiet.” The only info on the charge is their phone # 8556560409. I’m doing another charge back and requesting a new card number. Maybe my card # was stolen online without my knowledge? Hacks into companies happen all the time.

  20. Matthew

    @Duluth, how they got our card numbers (and other personal information) in the first place still remains a mystery! In all of our discussions here, we have never found one common place where we all used our cards, one common brand of card, or one common issuing bank. The card of mine that was hacked was =never= used on Amazon, and =never= used at Target (either in a store or online), which were two strong theories. Some of us were hacked in cards that were only used online, and others in cards that were only used in person. I might have thought mine was part of the recently disclosed data breach at JP Morgan Chase, since Chase was the issuing bank for my card, but many other commenters here used cards from other banks. We just don’t know.

    It could be that there are so many security holes in the credit card usage system that all of the information was dribbling out of many holes for a long time and we only now started talking to each other and comparing notes!

  21. Nick Shakespeare

    Hey! Just had the same thing happen to me. I called them up today, on 10-15-14. So yes, this same “company” is still doing this.

    2 charges, first was on 9-1-14, from 888-441-2916.com, who directed me to 866-732-8213. Oddly, my credit card marked this charge within the “Legal and Professional” category.
    Second charge was on 9-10-14, from PURECLEAN 866-732-8213.

    Both charges were for “Raspberry Keytone Strength,” both of which I haven’t received, and both of which cost, yep, you guessed it, $49.95. Both times, I spoke with the 3rd party customer service center that I think we’re all familiar with.

    After asking for a refund, they said one refund would go through, and I should receive it within 7-10 business days, however the second refund could not go through. They had to send the problem to their IT team, who would get back to me in 7 to 10 business days.

    I sent the FBI a message, (THANK YOU FOR THAT LINK!)
    Here it is again!
    https://tips.fbi.gov/

    Hopefully enough people have brought this up, and hopefully something will be done about it.

  22. Kimrey

    I wanted to report that I wrote Amazon about maybe “Thinking out of box on this one” but just got blown off. The tie I have confirmed along with my girlfriend is that we both only store our credit on Amazon I was on my account bought school books next thing you know I am being charges (2) different times for a product I have no idea about. And it is the same I was rein-burst for one but waiting from Pure-clean for weeks I have been fighting with these people for my other $49.95. This bad news spread the word to send Amazon your experience too! There big enough to do something about this kind of stuff.
    Thank you,
    KLK

  23. Patricia

    Kimrey, my common link was also Amazon, which is the only place where my MasterCard credit card number was on record. My second fraudulent $49.95 charge came through within a few days after I made a $49.95 legitimate purchase from Amazon for a product. When I called Amazon’s customer service, I was told that there was NO WAY a security breach could have happened. I still wonder if maybe someone that works for Amazon hasn’t sold Amazon customers’ PII through black market means, to make extra $$.

  24. AV

    @Nick Shakespeare:

    1-866-732-8213 aka AlphaCleansing.com aka very likely the same scam operation paying to run on the NationalNet network.
    Scam complaints: November 18, 2013 – Oct 15, 2014 > 1-866-732-8213 aka AlphaCleansing.com lookup http://who.is/whois/AlphaCleansing.com > The registrant owner of that domain name is hidden by the same ownership-hidding proxy service, WHOISGUARD.COM, to continue hiding its fraud scam ownership–until a court/law enforcement/investigator places an order to duvulge the scammer). Enter 888-441-2916.com, same hidden ownership.

    http://bgp.he.net/dns/AlphaCleansing.com#_ipinfo (again, running on the same hosted network, NationalNet, Inc–the scam operation is paying to run on the same network as other $49.96 AKAs, mention in prior posts).

    Another AKA: alphafemaleweightloss.com payed to operate again on the NationalNet network ( http://bgp.he.net/dns/alphafemaleweightloss.com#_ipinfo )

    Another AKA: 888-302-6938.com, same scam-hiding ownership service; paying to run on the Namecheap network (which has been mentioned before)

    Another AKA: VeraxiSupport.com AKA 888-302-6938.com (one complaint), same scam-hiding ownership service; paying to run on the NationalNet network

  25. Rita

    Glad I found this post…I have two charges of $49.95 on my credit card statement this month. One on 9/7 to GarciniaDiet and one on 9/22 to SlimDown. Apparently, these are additional company names for Raspberry Ketone Strength. BEWARE!!

  26. GregFromCos

    Jim, likely they just purchased numbers off the black market. That is where all those compromised numbers (Home Depot, Target, Etc…) eventually end up. If you read back through all the comments you will see no common thread among all cases. A couple people may have a common thread (for example the recent 3rd party Amazon distributor), but not everyone had Amazon charges. The common thread is that somewhere your card was compromised.

  27. AV

    Has there been a case of an Discover or American Express card being used for these $49.95 charges? I did a bit of world wide web checking and haven’t found an instance yet going back a year.

    Matthew also made the comment that those two cards haven’t been found to be used for this fraud, in the last paragraph here:
    http://www.illiteratewithdrawal.com/2014/08/raspberry-ketone-strength-scam/comment-page-2/#comment-17939

    Perhaps there’s a breach directly associated with VIsa/Mastercard.

  28. Matthew

    Since I last posted a comment here, one of my spouse’s cards, also (like mine) a Chase Visa, has been hit with the scam. Interesting things to note here:
    * My own experience was very early in the scamming process and I had to practically turn cartwheels to convince their fraud department that the charge really wasn’t a legitimate purchase that I had made. My spouse on the other hand actually got a proactive email stating that questionable activity had been detected on his account and instructing him to call them. After his call, he said that the agent he spoke to seemed very familiar with this particular situation.
    * This particular card is one that hasn’t been used as a credit card (for purchases) literally for years. It has a cash advance on it that is being paid off month by month, but the physical card is in a drawer and hasn’t seen the inside of a store (or a wallet) in quite some time. So it seems really unlikely that the data leakage came from Target or Amazon or a donation to the Red Cross or any of the many other suggested places people have mentioned.
    * You may recall that there were articles published around Labor Day about a data breach affecting 5 banks, including Chase. This is the only possible place information about this card could have come from, in my opinion, because if they had data from way back when this card was being actively used, I think they would have used it before now.

  29. GregFromCos

    Ted, that explanation is wrong for this example. Several pointed out and he’s not updated that post. It’s nothing to do with affiliate scam.

  30. smokemirrorz

    Just has this same charge on my credit card, unfortunately it happened back on September 2nd and I only just caught it now. I just spoke with a rep from the customer service of the company (who was very nice) and she explained to me that it was for ‘Raspberry Ketone Strength’ which I have NEVER heard of. I am currently on hold with my credit card company to dispute this. Hopefully it will all get cleared up but I also wish it was easier to find these scammers.

  31. Tony

    I just got hit with the exact same scam today- fortunately, the charge had just been posted on my account and (I hope) is being reversed by my bank. I could have written any of the posts in this thread from other victims, that’s how similar my experience has been.

    As someone who is intimately familiar with the cybersecurity arena, I can only conclude that our card numbers and information were captured in one of the recent merchant data breaches and sold on the black market, usually out of Eastern Europe. Someone unbelievably unscrupulous is purchasing our information from the thieves for about $20 per number, I believe, based on news articles, and finds it profitable to run or contract with a call center through a series of shell companies to create an illusion of a legitimate purchase of some trendy product to: 1) hope that some people never notice it on their account statements; or, 2) hassle, using various tactics, the people that do call in enough to get away with keeping at least one charge of $49.95. By my math, and assuming some overhead in the event that they actually pay the “customer service” people that have to suffer with complaint calls all day, if they get to keep even 25%-30% of their ill-gotten gains then they’re raking in the illegal profits.

    The previous paragraph is essentially someone’s pathetic business plan- someone who is perhaps intelligent, perceptive and enterprising enough to be successful in a legitimate business but chooses to be a scammy criminal, taking advantage of weaknesses in technology and the veil of anonymity that technology can provide to do so.

    I find that for some psychological reason, people like this are simply unable to conduct an honest transaction at all, so ultimately they end up screwing their employees, their partners, and anyone who gets in the way of them keeping every dollar that gets trapped in their web. They’re the “roach-motels” of business: money checks in but never checks out. Quite often they’re serial hustlers and move from one deception to the next. It’s very sad to think about, especially when they could do at least as well by earning their wealth legitimately.

    Let’s hope that law enforcement officials catch up with them when enough banks (more than the consumers, realistically) start to feel the pinch and put the pressure on the authorities to prioritize this case.

  32. Brenda

    Hi There:
    Well, writing from Canada. Same thing has happened to me and thank you for your posts so that I can understand this.

  33. Brenda

    I have had two charges on my BMO Master Card. One in Sept from WorkingOutDaily.com and now in November from RNI which after calling the infamous “Customer Service” is saying that the November charge is from RaspberryKetoneStrength.com Both inquiries tonight have resulted in me speaking to the same person at the “Customer Service” company even though the info on my statement has two different telephone numbers (one for each of the companies fraudulently charging my card), his name is Joe Garcia and is located in Florida however he says he cannot release his direct telephone number. He told me that he represents 1000 companies. My card company will not call this fraud because the “Customer Service” company has an account with my correct name, address and email saying that I obviously gave it to them at some point. (Wish they would put a little more value in the word of their clients). The credit card company requires a cancellation number from the billing company in order to begin the dispute process. Joe at “Customer Service” has informed me that one cancellation number is good for all issues which tells me that all these 1000 companies are charging from the same data base. When I questioned him on this fact he said that none of the companies he represents will be able to bill me now as my info has now been deleted from their system and I have been put on a “Black List” which means that my info is still there or they wouldn’t know who to black list. And the only reason they would black list me must be because they feel I am possibly on to them (thanks to the others on this post) BMOs advice was that there are bad companies out there and they will just try and get my money back for me. My frustration is that I don’t believe anyone is really looking into the real problem here except for those of us that are online expressing our frustration over how this is allowed to happen and trying to find out the info ourselves. Heads up, the one way the credit card company will dispute is if I don’t receive any raspberry ketones within 30 days from the charge however, the next issue is that WorkingOutDaily is an online company and there will never be anything to “receive” so I can’t prove it wasn’t me that ordered it.

  34. Wil

    Check your CC Account Agreement for “Liability for Unauthorized Use” and “Notify Us In Case Of Errors Or Questions About Your Statement”. In order to insure your rights you must notify them in WRITING. Just calling them on the phone is not legally enough. Include in that written notice that you did not order the product, you did not receive the produce, you don’t want the product and you don’t even know what the product is. Also slip in the word “fraud”. That usually gets their attention. I did finally get the charges expunged from my account after the magic word FRAUD was used.

  35. AV

    Quote, “Payment cards used at these merchants between November 5, 2009 and September 24, 2014 may have been affected although we only found evidence of actual network traffic capture [unauthorized capture] from August 17, 2014 through September 24, 2014.”

    Correction to my first post today: It’s a payment gateway, not a processor; but either way it is part of the data pah.

  36. AV

    Searching the payment gateway company website, http://corporate.chargeanywhere.com/certifications-and-partnerships , I see noteable banks (listed at the bottom of the page) that sponsor the breached solution. Quote, “Charge Anywhere’s bank sponsorships enable bank customers to utilize Charge Anywhere’s solutions.”:

    Bank of America®
    BB&T Financial®
    Branch Banking & Trust Company® (aka BB&T based in NC)
    Citicorp Payment Services®
    Comerica Bank®
    First Citizens Bank & Trust Company® (locations seemingly no further north than Maryland and the state of Washington state; but states south)
    First National Bank of Omaha®
    Firstmerit Bank® (headquartered in Akron, Ohio; locations in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Pennsylvania)
    Huntington National Bank®
    JP Morgan Chase Bank®
    Keybank®
    Merrick Bank Corporation® (based in UT)
    NCMIC Finance Corporation® (Chiropractic Malpractice Insurance for Doctors)
    Somerset Trust Company® (seemingly based in Somerset, PA)
    Wells Fargo Bank®

    There are notable Canadian banks listed on the page too, that I’ve removed from this post.

  37. David

    I just found out about this scam on my debit card and they charged 5 months last year in 2014 and the cust. service could not credit since it was past 90 days. there is no product that they ship. like one of the victims mentioned, they charge it, if no one dispute it, they will get the money. if someone dispute it, so what they refund it. there is no product, no shipping or tracking no. Just imagine they do this scam on 2 million plus people just say in the US. 2,000,000 x 49.95 is $100,000,000 per months is what these scammers are pocketing. multiply that by 12 months, comes to 1.2 BILLION DOLLARS that these scammers are stealing from public. you need to report this to FBI. there was a link in the one on top of fbi site to report them. do your bank balance each month and never buy anything on debit card. best to buy cash as option 1 or pay by credit card so you can get refund. I think even with credit card is 3 months. amex I think is a year or 2. check with your credit card.

  38. Scott

    Hi David,

    Sorry to hear that this scam affected you too! It is unfortunate that things like this are forcing us to really pay much closer attention to our statements. It is especially bad for debit cards because it is “real” money stolen vs credit.

    Thanks for the suggestion to submit this to the FBI. Many of us have been doing this as well as contacting local attorney generals. We’ve even had some current and former employees of this site write in to tell us about how the company operates.

    Hopefully these scammers will be brought to justice soon!

    Scott

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