November 18, 2009
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News: CC Scam Hits Auto Repair Industry
A new credit card scam finds criminals preying on automobile owners who recently visited an automotive repair facility. According to William Mitchell, President and CEO of the Merchant Concepts in Portland, Oregon thieves are posing as representatives of credit card companies and calling automotive repair facilities. Merchant Concepts, a credit card payment processing company said that someone posing as a Visa and MasterCard representative called a luxury car dealership and told the employee that its last two credit card transactions did not go through properly. The caller requested the authorization codes with the customer's name, addresses, and last four digits of their phone numbers. He then used that information to lookup and locate the customer.
After locating the customer, the thief called him/her and posed as an employee of the automotive repair facility. The customer was told that the facility made an error while calculating the automobile repair charges and they had been overcharged. The thief asked the customer for his credit card information so that he could issue a credit. The caller also asked the customer to verify the authorization code from the printed receipt. According to Mitchell, customers were completely unsuspecting and were very willing to hand over the credit card information with the understanding that they would be receiving a credit.
Authorities are also very concerned over the fact that the customer's caller ID indicated that the caller was indeed calling from the automotive dealership; therefore, the customer had no reason to suspect that it was a credit card scam. According to Mr. Mitchell, the owner of Merchant Concepts, once the thief obtains the card information, there is typically no stopping him from running it up to the max. The automotive dealer in this case does not believe that anyone from within the company is involved. However, the authorities will continue to investigate. Mitchell says this is a very calculated thief. The company is warning all automobile repair facilities to never hand out any customer information to a caller. He says card companies will not call dealers on the phone to obtain such information.