During my course of researching and writing this ebook, I had to travel to commercial capital of Nigeria- Lagos state- to find out more information about the rumours that stolen credit cards were common feature among Internet criminals.
Within a short time, I was able to gather enough information to show that there were many Nigerians using stolen credit cards to shop on the Internet.
Most of these credit card information have been sent to them by their criminal friends and associates in the developed world who are engaged in stealing physical credit card or just the credit card information.
The following stories in the news will tell you more about Nigeria's involvement in credit card fraud:
Relay Phone Scam Hits Fargo-Moorhead Area
By Craig McEwen, The Forum
Published Wednesday, June 02, 2004
A scam using stolen credit card numbers to make purchases using a relay calling service reserved for the deaf has hit Fargo-Moorhead.
On Thursday, Alan Evans Bridal of Moorhead received a call taken by Mark Bayer, one of the store's owners.
"This is Mark from Nigeria. I'm interested in purchasing 30 wedding gowns," the caller told a telephone operator, who relayed the message to Bayer.
"I'm not interested in selling them to you over the phone," Bayer said, telling the caller to stop in the store and he would gladly sell him 30 wedding dresses.
The operator relayed that message back to the Nigerian customer, who said, "Thank you very much," and hung up.
Bayer knew right away what was going on after reading about similar calls from warnings posted on the Internet.
"Our industry has alerted us," said Valerie Softing, another Alan Evans store partner. "They order 20 to 50 wedding gowns from store stock, put it on stolen credit cards and ask to have it shipped overnight to Nigeria."
It can take several days, even weeks to find out if the credit card purchase went through, Softing said. "By that time you've lost all your merchandise."
The same thing has been happening in Fargo. "We see this scam surface from time to time," said Parrell Grossman, director of the North Dakota attorney general's consumer protection division.
North Dakota businesses need to be very careful when they get suspicious large- quantity, large-ticket orders from outside the state or country, Grossman said.
To report an incident in North Dakota they should call (800) 472-2600, he said.
Leslie Sandberg, press secretary for the Minnesota attorney general's office, said victims of such scams can also call the U.S. Secret Service financial crimes division at (202) 406-5850S.
Ron Peterson said Crown Jewels of Fargo has received about 10 calls in the past month.
A store employee came "very close" to shipping out $1,500 worth of gold chains, Peterson said.
The caller gave the employee a Master Card credit card number, registered to an account in Nigeria. But store personnel wondered why anyone from Nigeria would be purchasing anything in North Dakota, Peterson said.
Master Card's fraud division said the credit card number the store clerk was given did not match the name on the card.
Another customer wanted to order 10 Rado stainless steel watches by phone.
"I said, wow, this is a good deal," Peterson recalls. "But we didn't have 10."
Peterson said he told the potential customer how many Rado watches the store had. The customer wanted prices, he said.
Peterson told the customer to call back. The call never came.
Telephone companies offer the relay calls to assist disabled persons.
For instance, Sprint's Website www.sprintrelayonline.com says Sprint Relay Online is a service offered to deaf and hard of hearing individuals that allows them to play relay calls over the Internet between locations in the United States (including its territories).
International calls will either be blocked or terminated, the Web site says.
AT&T Internet Relay Service enables deaf, hard of hearing or speech disabled people to place text calls through the Internet to hearing people who use standard phones to communicate.
Users access the relay site and are connected to a communications assistant to whom they type messages. The assistant relays the messages verbally to the hearing person on the other end of the line, who then types a return message.
AT&T advises that anyone receiving unwanted Internet relay calls request that a relay block be placed on their telephone line. For more information check out www.consumer.att.com/relay/internet/faq.html
Bayer said he thinks the scam artists are using the relay call system because it's more difficult to track.
Readers can reach Forum Business Editor Craig McEwen at (701) 241-5502
Ordering Used Books With Stolen Credit Cards
Archive: Online bookselling
An order from Indonesia made me a bit wary this morning. Along with Nigeria and Eastern Europe, Indonesia is one of the places where stolen credit cards are used to order books.
That the customer asked for Global Express shipping made me less wary. I figured he was a journalist who needed the book (a collection of Door’s lyrics) for an article.
When I started to reply to his email I noticed his name appeared as “Stolen CC’s.”
I guess when you are using someone else’s credit card there’s no reason to worry about the shipping cost.
Stolen Credit Cards Stick Businesses With Big Losses Through "Nigerian Repackaging Scam"
A Consumer Alert From Your Better Business Bureau.
April 14, 2004
For More Information:
Sarah Rolfingsmeier
(502) 588-0043
(Louisville, KY - April 14, 2004) The Better Business Bureau serving Louisville, Southern Indiana and Western Kentucky is alerting businesses to be aware of a scam involving e-mail and telephone orders for merchandise, where payment is made using one or more credit cards.
Businesses accepting credit card orders by telephone should be especially cautious in view of "smarter tactics" being employed by Nigerian scam artists.
For good reason, businesses are cautious about shipments to foreign addresses, especially to "high fraud" destinations such as Nigeria and Eastern Europe.
Unfortunately, scam artists from these high-fraud countries have found a way around such precautions. Merchandise is being ordered for shipment to a U. S. address, where an arguably innocent "repackager" is hired to ship the merchandise to a foreign destination.
Cases that have come to the attention of the BBB and local law enforcement have mostly involved shipments to Nigeria.
Several Better Business Bureaus have received reports of fraudulent orders placed with businesses using TTY devices and relay operators serving the hearing-impaired.
The scammers may believe a company will "let its guard down" when the company believes it is dealing with a hearing-impaired customer.
Both "repackagers" and businesses selling merchandise have been victims of these scams.
"Repackagers" provide domestic shipping addresses to which the original sellers are instructed to ship merchandise. The "repackagers' arrange for shipment of the merchandise to overseas addresses.
In cases that have come to the Bureau's attention, "repackagers" were recruited through "help wanted" ads offering employment.
Although promised payment for their work, "repackagers" have not paid for their services or have been paid using counterfeit checks subsequently charged back to their bank accounts.
"Repackagers" have been left "holding the bag" on shipping costs they expected would be paid by overseas recipients of merchandise.
Businesses shipping merchandise are learning later that credit cards used to purchase the merchandise were stolen, or had been secured using stolen identities.
In many cases, businesses that made the original sales must take the loss, even if the business obtained authorization on the credit card prior to shipping the merchandise.
Products purchased by these scammers have included CDs and DVDs, computers, printers, electronics and office supplies of all types, toner, medicines and medical supplies - indeed, any product that can be sold by telephone or e-mail and shipped.
Foreign Fraud Hits U.S. E-Commerce Firms Hard
Top offending countries: Yugoslavia, Nigeria, Romania
By Bob Sullivan
Technology correspondent,
MSNBC
Updated: 7:56 p.m. ET April 01, 2004
Selling stuff online? Beware orders from Yugoslavia, Nigeria, Romania, Pakistan and Indonesia.
A study released Thursday claims that more than 40 percent of all credit card fraud suffered by U.S. companies online is committed by overseas crooks, with orders from those five countries the most likely to be cons.
But selling internationally isn't automatically risky. The study also showed that fraud rates among sales to New Zealand, Switzerland, Japan, France and Italy are lower than fraud rates for domestic U.S. sales.
Yugoslavia ranked first among high-risk countries, the study found. About 13 percent of purchases initiated from that country were fraudulent. By comparison, the fraud rate in the U.S. is about 1.7 percent, according to Cybersource Corp., which sells anti-fraud software.
Many online merchants just avoid global sales all together. A full one-third of medium and large Web sites simply won't sell to international customers, according to a separate recent survey, conducted by Cybersource.
International fraud rates are four times higher than domestic rates, the company says.
Despite the high risk of selling overseas -- better than 1 in 10 purchases made from Romania are fraudulent, for example -- the Merchant Risk Council says electronic commerce Web sites shouldn't shy away from the potential revenue source.
The council is a consortium of 1,500 companies that do business on the Web.
"Our recommendation is you should always ship internationally," said Julie Ferguson, a council board member. "But if you are shipping to a higher risk location you ought to mark it for review."
4 Nigerians Arrested For Internet Frauds
Source: NewsNow
Police have arrested four Nigerians for allegedly stealing credit card numbers and using them to purchase products through the Internet.
These products were re-sold at higher prices, it claimed. Charged with cheating and criminal conspiracy, the four have been sent to CBI custody for seven days.
According to the CBI, the four accused were living in Delhi after allegedly enrolling themselves at computer education institutes. ‘‘Abdul Aziz claims to be studying at Aptech computer institute.
The others could not even tell us the name of the institutes they were studying in,’’ a CBI officer said.
With the arrest, the CBI has recovered two floppies containing 1,500 credit card numbers. On inquiry the agency found that most of the cards had either been surrendered or reported lost.
The CBI has seized photocopies of blank cheques of a foreign bank, a seal of the Nigerian high commission, a forged letter from the Agra SP, recommending residential permit for the Nigerians and a forged diplomatic identity card issued by the ministry of external affairs.
