Vendor Warning Winch Sales Overseas

[Chris Geiger]

Watch out for winch purchase scams. Below is an example. They use different names, emails and such but they always ask for winches and they always want to pay with a stolen credit card.


Dear Sir,

My name Andi Budiyanto from Indonesia, I'm interested to buy from your store.
My order is:
- warn 8274 , quantity: 5 units.

Please confirm me the total prices and shipping cost to Singapore
by FedEx.
Do you accept Visa/Mastercard?

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best Regards,

Andi Budiyanto


When you get a request like this for several winches you may think hey this looks like a good sale. Watch out cause it's a stolen credit card. Once they get the winches from you they sell them on ebay. The real owner of the stolen card calls when they see the huge bill and then visa deducts that amount from your business account.

One simple step will save you. When you get the credit card number call visa and verify the customers address. You will find the address they are shipping to is outside the US but the card holder actually lives in the US. Have Visa call the card holder to verify the transaction. At this point Visa will cancel the old stolen card and issue their customer a new card. One stolen card down, one million+ more stolen cards to go.

These guys are hitting every off-road shop they can find that has a web page and email link. They never call, it's allways email.

[woody]

one of these clowns even emailed me because of my site, even tho I'm not a business....

good head-up tho!

[oldjeep]

I got the same email - got a web site, but no business.

[BillaVista]

Are you forwarding these fraudulent e-mails to the FBI / RCMP ??

Anyone got addresses?

Anyone let e-bay know?

I hate shit like this

Thanks for the heads up Chris (even though I don't have a biz either)

[PIG]

This doesn't just apply to wiches. I have had about 3 similar types of expierences within the past 6 months. The only difference was that they were after coil over shocks.

*Tip Of The Day* Be smart and only allow wire transferrs for non-US customers.

[Brad]

Tried the same shit at our shop a few times.

[tv_larsen]

Same thing here, but they wanted guages sent to Indonesia.

http://www.rockymountainextreme.com/...&threadid=4069

[MC4X4]

Its pricks like those guys that make it hard for guys like myself to order stuff from the US. I find now that some of the US shops dont deal with overseas customers.

[Chris Geiger]

Intresting, looks like they try different items from different places. Indonesia seems to be a common thread in all of these as well.

[PIG]

Originally posted by Chris Geiger
Intresting, looks like they try different items from different places. Indonesia seems to be a common thread in all of these as well.

Yep, Indonesia..................... I did some research (when these occurances started to happen) and found that Indonesia has THE highest rate of CC fraud in the world.

[GRMhick]

I had a guy wanting to buy all of parts I have sitting around and sent to somewhere in west africa. Something sounded fishy, and I stoped contact with him.
But ya, I wouldnt be suprised if it was the same sort of deal.

[unimogken]

On a mailing list i'm on we had a whole bunch of emails from Africa wanting to buy trucks. Their deal was that so and so owed them money and they'd send a money order and then you'd wire the left over money to the guys in Africa.

One guy fell for this and lost $7500! The money order comes up as bad a week after the money gets wired.

"MC4X4"... i'm sure if you had problems buying stuff from US companies I bet you can find someone on this board willing to help out another 4x4'er and get stuff to you.

Later.

Ken S.

[tubehead]

Exactly what PIG said. When I worked at M.O.R.E. we got hit twice from a screw wad from Indonesia. The second big order went out the day before we got the credit card dispute statement. After Allen did some searching he also found out that Indonesia had the highest rate fraud. Watch out guys.

[TPIJeep]

The sad thing about this is the FBI and Secret Service (BTW the secret service is supposed to be responisible for wire fraud/mail fraud) would not help me out even a little bit. I had a website up for a while and within 1 month a group out of Stockton, CA hit me up for 37,000. Stolen credit cards but they were shipped to the cardholders address they would wait and intercept the package, now thats ballsy!!!!

After linking all the orders to a common IP address with Active AOL accounts and a butt load of proof, I went to the FBI, where Special Agent "Justpullinacheck" listened to my story but did nothing, said he couldn't do crap if it was under 50,000. The thing is the day before I went to the FBI I got another order from these guys for about 7k, I told the agent, I will ship empty boxes to the address and all you have to do is sit a flunky new agent out front and see who accepts the package and bam, you got them. I also called the Stockton PD and asked if they could sit someone at the address to see who picks up the package but they said they didn't handle things like that!!

Well that was way to much work for them, so if you do get screwed by people like that in the US or overseas do not expect the feds to do a damn thing to help a hard working small business..

[Jeepmangled87]

thanks Ill watch out for it.

[One Big Zuk]

I was selling a winch on e-bay and a guy from indonesia wanted to buy it. He did not want to use Pay Pal but use a CC. It must have been the some guys. Thanks for the heads up.

[Trailer Park Trash]

My shop got hit too. Rockready kit, a detroit, some external res Doetsch Tech Shocks.

Josh

[Bones]

I've gotten a few of these to my home addy.

[Inchworm]

I had the same kind of experience with an email from Indonesia. The guy wanted 10 EZ Lockers and 10 Lock Rights. He wanted to put it on 3 different credit cards. I new something wasn't quite right so I told him I couldn't accept international credit cards. I even offered him 20% off to pay with a money order or cashiers check...never heard from him again.

[TR]

We got hit with that email today. 5 winch's to Indonesia. but this time he left a phone number in the email, now if it was good or not who knows????

[Shrock]

Thanks for the heads up. Got one today.


-----Original Message-----
From: ari donk [mailto:rastastore@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 12:41 PM
To: info@shrockworks.com
Subject: Need Info


Hallo,

Good day,I was visit your site and I get interest
with your product.I would like to purchase the product
for sample in our store.There's many of my costumer
need the product while we did'nt have the stock of
that product.So maybe you could help me to supply to
my store.But before a place my order to purchase I
would ask you regarding the product.

1.Do you ship for international to Indonesia
(overseas)
2.Do you accept payment by credit card
3.Could you despact my order by AIRBORNE or FEDEX
delivery to my country Indonesia.

AND THIS IS MY REQUEST :
Type : WARN WINCHES M8274-50
Quantity : 4 unit

Please calculate my order and the shipping cost to
my country by AIRBORNE or FEDEX delivery only and I
will give you my payment and billing details later.

Looking forward to doing more bussines with your
Company.

Best Regards,

RASTA STORE

[PIG]

Got this yesterday:


Dear Sir,

I'm looking for :
- King Shocks
Type : 2.5 inch coil over with reservoir Valving : medium / soft Travel : 12 inch Qty : 4 (1 set)
** Can you help me to supply this goods as my
request to Indonesia?

** Can you send my order by Fedex?

If you can, please calculate my total order with shipping cost
And i'll give you my creditcard number ASAP.

Thank for your cooperation and really need your
information ASAP .


Best Regard,
Tan Sing

[desertCJ]

Pig...now I understand our conversation the other day. Seems easy enough to just not do business out of the country, but I know there are a lot of wheelers in Canada as well

[intlscoutman]

We shipped over $10,000 in Warn products (mostly winches) to Indonesia. It started when a received an email reply from a guy telling me that he wanted to purchase my winch, which was listed on ebay, but he didn't want to use PayPal. I of course questioned this extensively and he sent me to an extremely professional link telling how unsafe PayPal was when used from select countries, namely Indonesia. Being naive, I bit and sent $3000 worth of winches to him in Indonesia. The credit card went through fine and I thought everything was fine and dandy. Three weeks later he emailed me for another shipment of $7000 worth of winches as "his customers were going crazy for them and would pay any amount." I charged another $7000, split between two different credit cards, and both went through fine.

Moving forward in time, 2 months later, I received chargebacks from the credit card company for all $10,000 worth of charges. I was forced to repay it, with only 2 days notice, and have not been able to figure out any way to track these guys.

I'm not throwing this story out for sympathy, as I truly should have known that the deal sounded way too good to be true, but I am interested to see how many others were affected by these criminals.

If anyone has any particular details/stories, etc. feel free to PM me.

[Chris Geiger]

I think it's time to bomb that whole country!