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Bdubs737 t1_jbo73gl wrote

This article confuses me. How do you refund money back to a credit card that wasnt used in the original purchase?

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Range-Shoddy t1_jbod8ct wrote

Some places let you do it. It’s a terrible idea and this is why.

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Bdubs737 t1_jbofg13 wrote

Just So I understand, some places you can return something you bought w/ cash or another card and they will refund it back to a different card? What if your cc has a 15K limit? How do you return a 20K purchase to 15k limit card? I was under the impression the article messed up, as apparently no one proof reads anymore, and meant to say debit card.

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SwitchARoux t1_jbokd5b wrote

It's possible. I used a cc to pay for a cruise that was eventually refunded because of COVID. By that time I had paid off the card completely, so I just had a -$1300 balance (basically a credit to spend).

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cyanclam t1_jboosbf wrote

While paying 18.9% interest back to you, right?

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theknyte t1_jbr2mj8 wrote

>While paying 18.9% interest back to you, right?

Damn, that should be a law! Like how when you put power back into the grid via solar or such, and the power company has to pay you at the same rate they charge you for it.

If your Credit Card is in negative balance, then the credit card company should legally have to pay the same interest they charge on it.

Edit: After further reflection, they'd just probably cut you a check the second your account hits negative. Wishful thinking though.

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Bdubs737 t1_jbr8q1i wrote

Thats a great idea. You know the govt would never let that hapoen cause of how much money their lobby gives them.

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GTdspDude t1_jbpi9ze wrote

Well keep in mind in the scenario you described, if the 15k limit card had zero balance, the 20k refund would take it to -20k balance and now you have a 35k limit card. The negative balance is a thing any CC will allow, as it’s basically you giving them an interest free loan

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Boofaholic_Supreme t1_jbsqsbn wrote

What’s absolutely insane is in ~2018 I pre-paid $1000 to a Bank of America credit card with a $2500 limit and no outstanding balance. Tried buying a $3K trip, wouldn’t go through because it was larger than my credit limit… phone call was no help and there was no way to spend over $2500 until the payment processed. I had to borrow money to put on another card to make it work, even though I already had the money on the card

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GTdspDude t1_jbt9uhq wrote

Wow that’s nuts, too bad the vendor couldn’t break the transaction in 2 for you

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Boofaholic_Supreme t1_jbtggye wrote

Thankfully the travel site did! Only had to borrow ~$500. BoA was completely inflexible

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GTdspDude t1_jbtgnvf wrote

Oh wow so you couldn’t run the card 2x (edit: or rather I’m surprised that failed)? I was thinking I could see how they’d block one large transaction over the limit, but 2 transactions below the limit and a balance below limit might go through.

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Boofaholic_Supreme t1_jbtk93x wrote

It was one of those experiences that left me feeling like I was in the Twilight Zone. I’m guessing at that time (early 2017 now that i think of it) while the $3K transaction was being attempted, BoA calculated my available credit as $credit limit minus the $ i’d charged and not paid, but the charged amount couldnt be negative. The $1K prepayment was completely cleared and on the app said -$1000 balance and once the $2500 transaction owed balance was the correct $1500 with $1000 left to spend. It just took a couple days post-transaction. Too long to wait hence borrowing and using another card for the remainder. It just seemed to be a really stupid feature during the authorization &/or processing end of things.

The conversations with BOA’s employees were what really left me scratching my head and doubting reality but I no longer remember many details of them. It was a lot of “that’s another department,” among whatever else.

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GTdspDude t1_jbtof87 wrote

Yeah that sounds miserable, but I’m sure those employees also likely had nothing useful they could do for you as I imagine you stumbled into a series of SW if/then loops that took you down this bad path.

This is one reason why (if you have self control) it’s useful to increase credit limits (another being keeping utilization %’s low) - often times people ask “why bother, I don’t need it”.

Edit: not as a commentary on you by the way, just general observation - your situation I’d just log as unfortunate

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BrandonNeider t1_jbt000p wrote

Negative balances are possible. I’ve had it prior with my Amex

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SirShmooey t1_jbo73zr wrote

This story reminded me of the cinematic classic Blank Check.

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chicol1090 t1_jboawyt wrote

Where the kid gets a check for a cool million and spends like 10 million worth? Classic motion picture film.

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NBAWhoCares t1_jbok7lo wrote

>Where the kid gets a check for a cool million and spends like 10 million worth? Classic motion picture film.

10 million? The kid bought a fucking castle to live in lol

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boxofstuff t1_jbocywp wrote

But we got the brilliant performance of Tone Loc as Juice

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Zerole00 t1_jbp6jfp wrote

I rewatched the scenes as an adult and yeah, the math didn't pass the smell check lol

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morbidbutwhoisnt t1_jbvised wrote

To be fair the movie came out in 1994. A million dollars in 1994 would be like 2.1 million.

So, not really castle money but still more buying power. And if he was in the Midwest the castle would probably have been like $750k at the time.

I'm in a city and I remember $250k homes were like these huge nice houses.

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gtobiast13 t1_jbolas3 wrote

> The scam should have sounded alarms, before an alert co-worker noticed a $1 million order that Foster had failed to clear out

Looks like the person also issued the credit to their own personal CC then turned around and bought a Tesla and other high priced items. If they woulda kept it in believable amounts, didn’t flash the money around, and kept it off their own personal cards they might have gotten away with it.

I worked in corporate IT at my companies HQ a while back. My office was right next to the head of internal legal or something like that. Basically his job was to deal with people charging personal expenses to their corporate CC; internal fraud stuff. I had water cooler talks with him in the hall and he would mention frequently it’s always the dumbest ones who do it and they always go all in. It’s never a few hundred here and there. It’s always absurd amounts of charges and always the most obvious indicators (like we as a chemical company don’t purchase from luxury clothing brands).

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_neutral_person t1_jbp2ul7 wrote

> If they woulda kept it in believable amounts, didn’t flash the money around, and kept it off their own personal cards they might have gotten away with it.

The article clearly states the 1 million dollar charge is what got her busted. Considering she went into super felony territory I wonder what her long term game plan was? College and a normal life was over. IRS would eventually question how someone with a 20k income bought a Tesla. Should've bought a house in another country and left.

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Mr_Diesel13 t1_jbrvz1d wrote

If she did what another said and bought it on a credit card, then refunded to the CC to pay it off, would the IRS know?

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Nolsoth t1_jbskosy wrote

If the IRS was investigating they would pick it up for sure, but if you weren't on the IRS radar then clearly no.

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chucalaca t1_jbpgg31 wrote

I work for a cc processor, we had a guy put 40k on his business card at a strip club in Arizona, claimed he was drugged, but without a police report he was stuck with the charges

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gtobiast13 t1_jbppall wrote

Big RIP. And I'm terrified of accidentally using my corp CC for a personal gas fill up because it looks similar to my personal card I use for gas lol.

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chucalaca t1_jbptijw wrote

to prevent myself from doing the same i only carry the corporate card when i'm traveling on company money, otherwise it stays at home

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CryptographerDue1205 t1_jceao44 wrote

Remember this is a 19yr old college kid (i.e not a lot of impulse control). If she acted alone I would say it's pretty smart for a 19yr old and especially for a 19yr old in retail.

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nuclearswan t1_jbo9rku wrote

This is incredibly stupid. How did she expect to get away with it?

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Owain451 t1_jboo4e2 wrote

If you read the article, it said the security for the mall was shocked as well. It seems she would have gotten away with it if one of the other co-workers didn't notice a million-dollar transaction the 19-y/o failed to clear out.

It sounds like the company has a very poor transaction system that leaves opportunity to exploit it.

She got caught after taking a $25,000 trip to Hawaii, buying a Tesla, and a bunch of expensive accessories/clothes.

I'm sure eventually someone else would have said something at some point. All that money would raise flags somewhere down the line I feel, as the card company would notice a recent string of high-value spending.

That's what I assume would happen anyway. The thing is I could be wrong on that because the article doesn't mention anything like that.

So it's possible if she never forgot to clear the transaction the company might never have noticed.

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ShimmyZmizz t1_jbpayur wrote

I once worked with someone who was caught processing returns to a prepaid debit card for transactions that other customers did. So if a customer spent $500 on a transaction, a week or so later my coworker would process a return as if that customer came in and asked for everything to be refunded to a prepaid card that was not used in the original transaction.

This person got caught partially because she was not just doing returns the way my coworker did, she was also increasing the prices of the items being returned, which is so incredibly blatantly fraudulent and traceable.

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Owain451 t1_jbphtgl wrote

See, it seems like there are ways to mask your transactions but the greed pushes them too far.

I successfully "stole" a game console from when I worked at a popular adult arcade+restaurant/bar.

Normally only the regular gamers or no-lifers would ever win the systems.

But over the course of 7 or so months on Fridays, Saturdays and some Holidays I would:

a) collect the cards people left that only had a few tickets left. If they couldn't buy anything they would usually toss them, so I started asking if they wanted it back and would sneak then into a pocket of my Hoodia I kept under the desk.

b) Pad the ticket count at during times where the prize area wasn't super busy, but I knew management would be. Weekends and holidays were hell, but I knew no one would be monitoring the cameras at that time. So it was easy to sneak a quick free 200 tickets here or there but finding papers/other things to weigh or shred. We counted tickets by weight, and would add the approximate amount to the card. If the weight of the bag didn't match the virtual weight of the tickets that should be reflected, it would be an issue if it was off a lot.

On the busy days I knew I could get away with it.

c) Once I had about 50 discarded cards or so, I would have a friend come in so I could consolidate them. I had about 5 main cards that had the tickets stored. And once I calculated that I had enough, I had a friend go in and combine all 5 of the main cards and redeem the game console.

Never got caught. I don't know if anyone was ever suspicious.

In most companies there are exploits that can ve used if they are used properly. It's when you rush or get greedy/cocky that you ruin it.

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Fuck_You_Alls t1_jbq7kq8 wrote

I worked at costco when I was younger. The person in charge of all the costco credit card signups was stealing peoples identity's for years. This was just one store. This instance caused every single costco to change how they do the signups. Nothing is paper anymore and its all digital.

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FellowConspirator t1_jbollli wrote

She got caught because she forgot to clear out a $1 million order? Really? This is a jewlery store in the mall. Do they do that sort of business regularly? Is this not something that might require some sort of sign-off, ring some alarm bells?

It says that she stole >$500K over 3 days. She was able to buy a car and vacation, so there was some time between the fraud and getting caught.

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SuitableLife3 t1_jc9z98x wrote

I agree. This story doesn't make sense. Ignoring the 1 million dollar order, she would've been caught within 60 days when it came time to review the monthly financials. Either the business or the CC company was losing money on these charges which would have eventually led to an investigation and her getting caught.

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Joe_Mama t1_jbp1x8m wrote

A Criminal Justice major to boot!

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BishopofBling t1_jboqwow wrote

My Aunt did something like that when she worked at Discover card for years. My Aunt got caught because they did a surprise audit when Morgan Stanley sold Discover or something.

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Sebin7 t1_jbp7i6o wrote

Great, now she's ready for politics.

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NZNzven t1_jbqcwhc wrote

Terrible article, did some digging. Basically she embezzled a total of $500,000 in 8 separate transactions where she would "buy" an item, up the price, and then "return" the item and pocket the difference. She was an employee at a jewelry store and did these things. Terrible oversite if just anybody can adjust prices both ways on a whim.

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JayRabxx t1_jborfk9 wrote

So did she charge the transactions to a stolen card? Or ring it out as cash then refund to her card? I can’t figure out how she didn’t get caught immediately. Cause there’s no way she rang up half a mil on one card.

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Moopboop207 t1_jbxti6c wrote

That student’s name: George Santos.

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Littleobe2 t1_jbruwav wrote

He should go work on wall street

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Roundaboutsix t1_jbqytbs wrote

Steals a half million and gets out on bail while some male perp steals $35 from a gas station and they throw away the key. White privilege (Wait she’s black? Never mind.)

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bubba160 t1_jbp5gis wrote

Worth it. I have student loans totaling a tenth of that ant it took 10 years to repay. I hope she gets out quickly.

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icelandichorsey t1_jbocbkx wrote

I love how tesla is getting great publicity here 😉

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