Be careful of voucher codes sold on HUKD and elsewhere - Potential credit card theft

POSTED BY: Liddle ol' me 3 weeks, 3 days ago

With the rise of online credit card theft (hacked from online retailers etc - see news items today), one of the ways fraudsters can turn their theft into cash with limited risk to thmselves is to buy 'virtual' vouchers (sent as a code) with the stolen card details and then sell them on in places like HUKD. This is a warning to fellow HUKD'ers to be on the alert for such potential scams here, along with a personal example of how I was nearly caught.

Here is what happened to me (but not on here): I agreed to buy a voucher but wanted to hold payment until I verified that the voucher worked. The seller reluctantly agreed based on my good feedback. I used the voucher and it appeared to work fine, but the retailer marked the item I wanted ( a Wii ) as out of stock so I asked my seller to wait until I could verify that they would get it back in stock. The seller tried to demand payment by saying that this was now my responsibility etc, but I held firm. When I phoned the retailer to check if/when the Wii would be restocked, I was asked questions about where I got the voucher. Long story short, it transpired that the day before one of their customers had reported the voucher having been purchased without their knowledge on their credit card. Fortunately, in this case I was alerted to the scam by the retailer. But the question is, how many people is this happening to? More worryingly, my guess is that most people who have their credit cards hacked will not even realise it has hapened for a month or more (i.e. until they find the item on their credit card statement). That gives the thief plenty of time to sell the vouchers on, and for us to be duped into buying and using the vouchers.

Before you ask, I don't want to give any more specific details about this event while it is ongoing. I am only posting this as a warning in case you are offered large virtual vouchers (i.e. vouchers that work in form of code from amazon, play, etc) that might have been 'purchased' through credit card theft. If you can get the seller's full details and can verify them then you should be ok, but be especially careful of sellers who give only details such as an ebay account and refuse to give an address and landline telephone number.

Tags: scams, credit card theft, voucher scam (Add a tag)