Fraud transactions with my ATM card

[ilya]

I have to do a lot of purchasing and I've found the best way to do this is to use multiple accounts. One account is for using and making payments, the other account is for deposits and direct transfers by me only.
So the card linked to the account with all the money never gets used for anything, it just sits in a box. In fact, I think its never been activated. ; )

The card I use for all purchases is linked to the "spending and checks" account and there is always just a grand at most more in there than needs to be for any checks or payments going through. This way, the number that goes out everywhere, is linked to an account that can only get ripped off for whats in there. Sure, I can still get defrauded like anyone else, but hopefully its for no more than whats in the account which is a very small percentage. The only way to get access to the main funds is if someone managed to actually get access to my complete banking login info. Just an idea as its worked really well for me. Keep all your money in an account that has no working cards associated or usable with it, then move money to a spending account with minimal funds as needed.
That way the only card info ever used that gets out can cause minimal damage compared to a card linked to all your funds.

 

[robr]

My company just got hit for $78K thanks to PayPal.

We worked with a well known company that manages events and they wanted us to open a PayPal account to tie to their payment website. I was not involved in this project and only heard about it when they came to me for help.

Apparently someone not in the US had a bunch of stolen credit cards and got access to our PayPal account, which I believe was actually a PayFlow Pro or some variant that allows a virtual terminal. They ran all sorts of cards thru transferring money into our account. Then they pulled all the money they put into our account, plus all the money we had in it out of the account somewhere in Europe.

Then the calls started. People calling us to ask why we had charged their cards. Of course they called MC/Visa etc and had the charges reversed which the card issuers happily did. Since we no longer had the funds in our PayPal account, PP took them right out of our bank account.

We lose.... it's PayPal..... not much recourse. We have a perfectly good merchant account, I have NO IDEA why we would go ahead with PayPal when this vendor asked us to do so.