I am sorry to say that JP and I were the victims of an identity theft scam. Everything is ok now, but it sure has been a pain.
The day we were leaving to go camping, we got a call from our credit union saying there was some weird activity on our card. I went in and found out that someone had tried to make a couple of Western Union transactions in JP's name. A small one went through for about $26, but a larger one for about $279 was denied and we were contacted. There was also a weird $1 AOL charge that I didn't recognize. We got those taken off and our cards were canceled.
Today I got a letter in the mail from AOL saying that my payment was late because the card information we had given them was out of date. Funny thing is...we don't use AOL. The letter referenced an email account with the user name JAMESCHAR100. Using the information on the letter, I was able to access that email account. In it I found four emails from Western Union. So, basically, whoever got our information set up an AOL email account in JP's name and sent the bill to our house.
I called Western Union to see if I could find out where the money was trying to be sent. Of course they wouldn't give me that information, but told me to contact my local authorities so they could subpoena the information. I called the police today and got them started on that investigation.
Then I finally figured it all out. A couple weeks ago JP got an email from PayPal saying we needed to update our account information. He forwarded it to me, I foolishly clicked the link and updated the info. When this all went down, JP suspected that email may have been a scam. I changed the cookies on my browser and went back to that site. A message appeared on the screen that said the web site was suspected of Web Forgery. They're called Phishing attacks - fraudulent web pages and emails imitate sources you trust to get your info. I was not careful. There were numerous signs that - looking back - I could have picked up on.
All I can say is praise God that it wasn't worse. We didn't end up losing any significant money or have to go to great pains to get things rectified. Just be careful out there, people!
2 comments:
Sorry to hear that happened to you, but glad it didn't get too out of hand.
With the barrage of information it can sometimes be overwhelming.
If you still have the email and haven't already, you should forward it to PayPal's fraud department (spoof@paypal.com)
Oh man, we know how much that sucks. I'm so thankful that everything got turned around! A couple years ago, some guy in Turkey decided to hack into Jon's bank account and withdraw $800 Jon didn't have from his credit line. After all the fines and stuff it ended up being about a $2000 deal. The bank never got it figured out but wanted the money anyway. It took us years to pay it off and it hurt our credit standing something awful. It's a big problem with everything being digital these days. Maybe we should go back to keeping mattresses full of cash...!! :)
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