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
Called Chase Visa - card cancelled, charge removed.
https://complaintwire.org/Complaint.aspx/X5BP ... YgwCkFwjOrxwXlA
Recent Amazon charges often show up in connection with fraudulent charges, but they are probably the largest merchant processing of lots of consumer CC charges.
Check your computers for virus infections.
Dumb or not, that is how on-line purchases are made.
You are connected, you are typing characters from your credit card, and all a virus needs to do is sniff the right event stream, and send out a packet on an open port.
Amazon's subsidiary, Zappo's, was hacked recently, but supposedly just their customer account passwords were compromised, not customer credit card info, so they just blocked all current passwords and sent out emails notifying customers to change passwords.
http://blogs.zappos.com/securityemail
This case happens 1 day after this "Digitial Star" supposedly shuts down, after posting required legal notices weeks to months earlier. That suggests either an insider, or someone with familiarity with payment processing who knew that might create a vulnerability that could be exploited for theft and fraud.
Second half of the puzzle is then where the card numbers were obtained from, as no complaints report doing business with "Digital Star", and only one reports ordering tickets from a similar LA based company.
"Amazon" is commonly reported as a recent purchase, but it is so widely used it commonly shows up suggested in card fraud complaints (i.e. the Russian small charges fraud tracked on dslreports and reported on Red Tape Chronicles).
You would expect an Amazon hack to be carefully exploited, due to the technical capability needed to pull it off, Amazon's technical capability to detect, block, and localize it, and it's potential value for fraud.
In contrast, this set of charges is always the same amount ($74.95), large enough to stand out and attract attention to the whole scheme and all apparently run through one about to be defunct merchant account, all at once. (Compare this with the more sophisticated multiyear Russian operation and its small $5 to $15 charges funneled through many front companies opened by dupes. )
May be trying to reduce the amount to slip more charges through.
category listed as ' Theatrical Producers ' . The abuse dept of BOA says the transaction was from Gibraltar .
I have not used Amazon for purchases . Hope all this info leads to the crooks .
category listed as ' Theatrical Producers ' . The abuse dept of BOA says the transaction was from Gibraltar .
I have not used Amazon for purchases . Hope all this info leads to the crooks .