Paypal Fraud!!! Check your accounts! Where to report?

[bilingual]

Hi, guys, sorry to bother you with this but I just found out that someone is transferring chunks of money from my checking account to their accounts using paypal. Check your accounts! If you do business on ebay, you may be a potential target from what I understand. I called paypal soon enough for them to cancel transactions, but still... I was hit for $1300.00 and $1800.00. His transfer of 4300.00 did not go through.

The name of a guy is Todd Dean, email [email protected]

I would like to nail that son of a bitch, but I do not know who to call. Moderator, please, allow this. It may concern a lot of people here.

[twiggyop]

lasal.net belongs to the following company:

RuralNet
1000 N 9th Street
Grand Junction, CO 81501

It doesn't appear as if they give away free email addresses, and it looks as if each address will have a real credit card/personal details attached to it. You may want to contact them and ask about [email protected] Being that his name is todd dean, I suspect his middle initial is c, and that the information on that account is accurate. If you can find his address, alert the local authorities in that city to the credit card fraud.

[THC]

And here's the telephone-number to his internet service provider: (877) 872-5638
The ISP that utilize "lasal.net" is operating under the name "Reanet". Just give them a call and then contact the police and the guy is as good as in jail already. His ISP definately has his address since they are billing him.
Hope you get your money back!

[bilingual]

Thanks, guys. I will find him, and the payback would be a bitch. Should I call 911 or how would I contact the police? Sorry for amateurish questions, it is my only second encounter with fraud, the first being Indonesian guy who tried to buy things from ebay with a stolen CC through exchangepath.

[Lil' Wayne]

call 911

[twiggyop]

Dont. 911 is for emergencies. Fraud is not an emergency. The best thing to do would be to call the local police department in his area, but you may not know that number. I'd suggest looking up the police department(non emergency) phone number for your area in the phone book and ask them how to proceed.

[blueberry muffin]

Don't call 911...that's usually reserved for life threatening emergencies and crimes in progress. You need to call the non-emergency police number for the town the the con-artist lives in, during normal business hours and ask to speak to a detective. You need to contact the fraud department of PayPal immediately. You need to contact your bank and get all the information/proof necessary. He must have transfered the money into his bank account and that information should be available from paypal. You may be better off contacting your local police dept and get them to make the calls for you. This probably crosses many different state lines which will make prosicution very difficult. Read the paypal TOS and see if they are in any way liable for this. Good luck and keep us informed!

[twiggyop]

Don't take this personal, but if you have had 2 unrelated instances of cc fraud against you, the odds are you are making a mistake somewhere. It isnt that common to have a cc# stolen, and the odds of it occurring twice to one person would be slim. Make sure that whenever you enter your credit card information, you know that the site is "secure" or "encrpyted", shown by a locked symbol.

Also, if the company stores your cc info protected by a password, be sure that you keep your password something difficult to guess. Make it a combination of both letters and numbers, more than 8 total, and not a common word/phrase. Don't make it easy for anyone to get this password from you either.

Again, don't take this personally....it could just be that you ended up randomly on the wrong end of the bell curve.

[bilingual]

twiggy, believe it or not, I am using misspelled foreign words with numbers as my pw's. Somehow he got my pw and went on a rampage trying to transfer money within 5 minutes. Good thing I have my cable and I received a paypal notification about the transfer via e-mail. I contacted paypal and my bank and i was assured that the transfer will not go through. Also, I found out that paypal has every account insured for up to 100.000 so I am OK. i will keep you posted how my "witchhunt" is going.

[Inspect-her Gadget]

Dude.... you guys are great! I bet if the police started handing over criminal cases to the GOT APEX forums, you'd all be solving unsolved mysteries!

[mahalo]

Is it easy to steal from Paypal users?

I was thinking about using their credit card processing services for my online store, but if people can easily take money from the account, there is just no way. Anyone know about this?

[bilingual]

I don't know if it's easy, but it turns out that it's possible. My paypal account is insured, and that's a consolation.

By the way, I traced the guy, called the PD in his home town and they are after him. Thanks again for some tips. PD could not believe that I collected all this info so quickly.

[twiggyop]

Congratulations. I hope they catch him. I also hope it isn't some kid who has no other offenses, but I doubt it. Anyway, Im glad you are using god precautions with passwords and such. Im surprised that paypal has a security hole somewhere, but anything is possible. I know too many people who have single 5 letter words as passwords. Its scary.

[Sumgai]

I got hit for $500 on PayPal last summer. It does happen. Luck would have it that the crook had been suspect and was being watched by PayPal Security based on complaints from previous transactions with others. PayPal stopped the transfer of funds frm my account before I even knew about it. I closed th PayPal account to avoid and future problems.

Polish Sumgai

[KimChii]

I'm not sure how adept this guy is at online CC fraud, but the smarter of the criminals do use hacked account.

There's a possiblity that this Todd guy may not have been involved at all. I always give the benefit of the doubt.
After all, we ARE in the USA and people ARE innocent until proven guilty, despite the current state of our court and police system.

Hope everything works out for the better, Sumgai.

[^Ces]

Are there any other places out there besides paypal that would allow a small business or person to accept credit cards without getting jacked?
=^Cesaro

[twiggyop]

Depending on how big your small business is, you might consider clickbank.com

[chinnboy]

I have not checked this out, but Citibank has a PayPal type thing called C2it.com, and they also have an internet only credit card called Click Citi, I think. The latter has a variety of fraud protection provisions and it may be that if used in concert with C2it that you wouldn't be liable if hacked through their own service.

The credit card is pretty good in its own right, with a 1% rebate on charges and 60 day price protection. The downside with C2it, I think, is that the person on the other end of the transaction has to open a C2it account as well. Many folks would not like this, even though they currently get a $10 credit to their account the first time they send money.

[bilingual]

Guys, the worst thing happened-my checking account is wiped out!!!! I am poor, broke, penniless. We thought we caught it early. Well, no, it still went through. I am on the phone with Paypal now... Anybody wants to help me sue them?

[ArkiStan]

what happened to the $100,000 in PayPal insurance??

[bilingual]

I contacted an attorney and I think I will be suing Paypal in a civil case. So it may be no more soon...

My bank said they will reverse all the charges... On Monday. I think I can survive a weekend on Discover Platinum. Damn, I am holding up well!

[TheLoneGunman]

I am not a lawyer, but I have played one on TV (LA LAW and other shows)...

I don't think you have a case against PayPal if you get the money back.

They did all they could. How could they know someone stole your password? As I understand it, once you realized a problem they immediately reacted (even if it was too late). What more could they have done.

The bottom line is that people (myself included) have been lulled into a false sense of security and just one misspelled foreign word stands between you and your wealth.

I am not specifically defending PayPal, but it was not like you went into the situation and didn't realize what could happen. If they insisted on 12 pieces of id before each transaction you would not use them and complain how difficult it was to use. Perhaps this will spur biometric recognition devices for these services, but even that is not foolproof.

They should have this person's IP and other records so it should not be hard to track him down. When they do, I hope they make an example of him.

[ziggie216]

i'm glad that u had that guy caught. they should just lock him up and throw away the key. oh yea.. he can work for his own food while hez locked up. sorry if this insults anyone, but I never like the idea of having my tax money used on someone's luxury.