Digital Star unauthorized charge
Complaint
Steve
Country: United States
A preauthorization for $74.95 from Digital Star with a bad phone number (208-123-7377) showed up on my debit card account 1/29/12. Called bank fraud department and had the account killed immediately. They stopped the charge since it had not completed. Do not know who Digital Star is or what the charge was for. I use the card for online purchases mainly through Amazon. No purchases in the last 30 dqays. However, I placed orders in the last 60 days from a company called Turncraft (woodworking plans), Personal Creations, and Entirely Pets. I wonder what companies others have used recently.
Comments
Note the idiot bank's suggestion to "phone Digital Star in the UK to first confirm I hadn’t dealt with them, " They would rather believe every merchant is trustworthy that believe their own customers. Also shows there is no effective mechanism to centralize fraud alerts tied to particular sources, or the banks are not using such mechanisms.
http://saskboy.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/digital-star-credit-card-scam/
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Digital Star Credit Card Scam
Posted on March 2, 2012 by saskboy
I’m a recent victim of Credit Card Crime. I’m actually kind of amused/intrigued by it.
My Visa was used by criminals to send ~$75 to “Digital Star” in the UK. Fraudulent charges appeared first after Feb. 3. Check your Visa, doesn’t matter which bank.
The charges were made by phone or Internet, Visa rep couldn’t distinguish! He suggested I phone Digital Star in the UK to first confirm I hadn’t dealt with them, although I was pretty sure I hadn’t made any ticket purchases in the UK, since I didn’t plan on going there anytime soon.
I’m not overly worried that my computer is compromised (cross my legs, hope to fly), and figure a business got hacked. Now I need to figure out everywhere online I have recurring payments set up, and add the new number. That’s a 10 day wait, and that’s the only downside to this, since I won’t have to pay the $150 missing from my credit.
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Posted 25 February 2012 - 04:09 AM
beware: check your bank statements for any deduction from this merchant. We've been scammed twice and bank will refund. Thought at first it has t do with hubby's digital key for Realtors. Just found out today that they took out money $74.99 again and we suspected something. I searched online and found out this:
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Must have been searched a LOT.
http://ge-money-bank-reviews.measuredup.com/s ... f-my-card-46386
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GE Money Bank Support Ticket
fraud Illegal use of my card - WALMART CREDIT
I have your Walmart Moneycard that you reload. Someone hacked into my account & used my card to purchase something from Digital Star from the UK for $74.95. I called the number 1-877-937-4098,to get this taken care of & I get some moron in the Philippians who barely speaks English! They can't help me said they couldn't do anything & HUNG UP ON ME! WTF*. I needed that money to pay a bill that is due today!. I closed out any money I had on this card and WILL NOT use it again, EVER.. plus you charged me an extra $3.00 just to do that. I would like my money $74.95 plus the $3.00 back, do not credit this card back just send me a check. please contact me back ASAP via this e-mail, so that we may resolve this matter. If you can't help me them I want to talk to the CEO of this company! Thank-you. Michelle
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My card has been canceled, and the person I spoke to said that I have to fill out a written fraud report, and turn it in by the due date if I want the provisional credit.
She also told me that this company could have hacked my card number anywhere, not just on Amazon or eBay. The last time I used it was at my dry cleaners, or someone with a pocket scanner could have hacked the number.
Digital Star +44208123737
Widely ranging card usage patterns also argue against a hack at, say, Amazon.
Some victims report charges on seldom or never used cards. That, and complaints involving banks running counter to bank card market share, argues against a virus, or a merchant or payment processor hack.
Best guess: "pinging", or randomly verifying card information on various sites that are open to being exploited for this purpose, followed by running through charges through this compromised "Digital Star" site to steal the money.
Due to the implied systematic search for exploitable vulnerabilities, sounds like a Russian, Ukranian, or similar eastern European operation.
My first question was: why did you not know right away that Digital Star was using their account fraudulently the first time I called? My second question was why hasn't this vendor account been shut down yet? How many more people are going to be caught up in this before action is taken and how many of those people will be unaware of fraudulent activity on their account? And what happens to those funds? Has anyone ever received a refund on their account voluntarily initiated by the credit card company?
These are questions I've relayed to a local CTV investigative reporter. I hope he will look into this and find some answers.
The system is supposed to suppress fraudulent merchant charnges by forcing chargebacks, with chargeback fees, back through they system so that the merchant account gets penalized for fraud, and their bank or payment processor sees a red flag from the high chargeback ratios.
It appears that many banks do not want to go to the trouble of treating this as a fraudulent charge, some even telling their customer to "call the merchant" to find out what the charge is for. This may mean that the number of fraud chargebacks is reduced by bank lazyness.
Alternatively, the crooks might be paying off their payment processor, either directly, or through the chargeback fees, as with the Wackovia scandal a few years back.
Some banks have been very responsive, in some cases calling consumers about the suspicious charges, while others have claimed they have to assume the charge is legitimate until the consumer disputes it.
BofA reports cover both types of responses. There is some indication from consumer reports that their overseas call centers were getting so many disputes they were trying to get rid of calling customers as fast as they could. Other consumers reported the charges were immediately reversed, and it appeared that BofA customer service was familiar with the problem.
Most problems have been with debit card charges, where some consumers have been out their money, supposedly for weeks, while the bank claimed they had to "investigate". This has been reported more with a Canadian bank than with U.S. banks.
http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/30 ... ibed-as-massive
He reported that hackers had access to the then-unknown processor's data from Jan. 21 through Feb. 25, and were able to siphon off enough data to easily create counterfeit cards. His sources called the leak "massive."
Visa, in a statement, also acknowledged the data theft but said its own systems were not hacked.
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Gartner security expert Avivah Litan said she's been told that the stolen data is already being used on the street by identity thieves.
"I’ve spoken with folks in the card business who are seeing signs of this breach mushroom. Looks like the hackers have started using the stolen card data more recently," she said.
She's been told that investigators believe the data theft originated in New York City.
"From what I hear, the breach involves a taxi and parking garage company in the New York City area, so if you’ve paid a NYC cab in the last few months with your credit or debit card — be sure to check your card statements for possible fraud,"
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Time period is consistent. +1
"Payment processor" breach is somewhat consistent. Merchant or bank breach is largely ruled out by
scattered geography. That is why I was looking at "pinging", but a payment processor breach would look similar, except for reports of charges against unused cards. +1
Alleged source in NYC is inconsistent with wide scattering of "digital star" consumer complains, if you believe it. -1
No reported connection with "digital star" complaints. This is distinctive enough of a characteristic (distinctive name, easily findable "dissolved" corp, numerous complaints visible through Google, etc.) that I would expect it to show up even through muddied news reports using unauthorized sources. -1
Reportedly, Secret Service was not much interested when contacted by one of the victims reporting on this site. News reports on the Global Payments breach suggest they have been working that case for at least several weeks before word leaked out. -1
Best guess: The two are separate breaches, and separate fraud operations run by different people.
Yes, I did call the secret service and was told basically they did not have the time or resources to investigate this. Told to call my local PD and file a report.
Apparently, until some security expert goes public to a reporter, all players just brush it under the rug. This lets even crooks with average intelligence tailor their game plan to keep the individual fraudulent transactions at nuisance levels, even if the totals run into the millions.
Meanwhile, the whole plan is clearly visible on consumer complaint sites, within a week or two of when the first complaints show up. It chould have been stopped at a fraction of the losses.
Complaints are tapering off, with most recent ones reporting finding charges on statements, rather than from checking online. Anyone know what bank or payment processor should get stuck with the tab for unreversed fraud?
I live in the uk
Those sites have commonly shown up in connection with fraudulent "membership" charges, cramming of unauthorized loan deposits at exhorbitant rates, and Indian fake "debt collection" extortion rackets.
What was the name of the site?
What URL?
Any phone numbers?
Evidence of cracking by "pinging".
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/03/mastercard-visa-warn-of-processor-breach/
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Joe Leikhim
March 30, 2012 at 10:23 pm
My Visa card (obtained through a credit union) was compromised Feb 14. I received an automated call the morning of Feb 15 from asking me for personal verification information about my CC. If this was Visa as I was to believe, it was stupid of them to contact me in that way, and equally stupid of me to provide verification. When I spoke to the operator who called about the fraud notification, I was told to call the VISA number on the card. The notification of fraud was apparently legit and upon investigation I found two transactions on my card 1) Transcertain, LLC $0.00 for “Address Verification Only and 2) Digital Star +44 $149.00 apparently for theater tickets over in the UK. The later was flagged as fraud.
In the year prior, my wife and I have received several unsolicited calls about this credit card regarding an “award” for purchases made by my wife (who almost never uses the card). When asked, the callers cannot provide any details of the purchases leading to their call. The callers sound Indian and were apparently pumping for address information which we never provided them. The call back numbers seemed to be assigned to MagicJack accounts. It is my belief the perpetrators had the VISA card information for over a year and recently somehow utilized Transcertain LLC to fill in the needed personal information. Thanks to Google, I found that Transcertain has apparently leaked on the internet, some of their own internal data processing documents, pertaining to their secure transaction protocol.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike: 35 2
Monitoring
April 1, 2012 at 4:27 pm
in the monitoring community, Transcertain is known (among MANY others) as tester {where fraudsters test their cards},
latest test in Dec/Jan/Feb were after previous genuine transactions at merchants with Support or Help in merchant name
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PLP EVENTS
Category
Theatrical Producers (Except Motion Pictures), Ticket Agencies
Get charged -1,247.25 USD..