Suspicious Behavior

Behavior to Watch Out For
To control fraud, you need to recognize the signs. Be alert for transactions with several of these characteristics:

• First-time shopper. Criminals usually hit a merchant once and don't return.
• Larger-than-normal orders. (This requires knowledge of what a "normal-sized" order is.) Because they may be using stolen cards or bogus account numbers that have a limited life span, crooks need to maximize the size of their fraudulent purchase.
• Orders consisting of several of the same item. As these items are intended for resale, having more of them increases the criminal's profits.
• Orders made up of "big-ticket" items. These items have maximum resale value and therefore maximum profit potential.
• Orders shipped "rush" or "overnight". Crooks want these items in their hands as soon as possible for the quickest possible resale and aren't concerned about extra delivery charges.
• Orders from Internet addresses making use of free e-mail services. For these services, there's no billing relationship and often no audit trail or verification that a legitimate cardholder has opened the account.
• Orders shipped to an international address. A significant number of fraudulent transactions are shipped to bogus cardholders outside of the U.S. And the Visa Address Verification Service can't validate non-U.S. addresses.
• Transactions on similar account numbers. This is particularly popular among criminals who are using account numbers generated by a CreditMaster-type scheme.
• Orders shipped to a single address but made on multiple cards. This is characteristic of a scheme based on CreditMaster-generated account numbers or a batch of stolen cards.
• Multiple transactions on one card over a very short period of time. Sometimes this is an attempt to "run" a card until the account is closed.
• Remember, none of these by itself means you're being scammed—but several of them together might. Check everything. Never ship a valuable order unless it checks out and you've received a valid authorization.