County business employee prevents attempted fraud

An employee at a County Road 28 business in Prince Edward County has helped prevent an attempted fraud.

Prince Edward OPP is investigating the Oct. 13 incident involving a scam commonly known as ‘card not present’ (CNP) fraud.

Police were advised by an employee that someone had made a purchase with a credit card over the phone for approximately $2,000 in product.

An individual attended to pick up the items, however were unable to produce the credit card used, and had a different name than what was on the card used to complete the purchase.

The employee refused to turn over the items as they believed it was an attempt to defraud the business.

Police located the individual who attempted to pick up the items and a traffic stop was conducted on County Road 3.

Approximately $3,000 worth of property was seized pending further investigation. No charges have been laid at this time, and the investigation is ongoing.

CNP fraud commonly occurs when a business accepts orders and payments over the phone, online or email. When the actual card owner disputes the unauthorized charge, the business must issue a chargeback to the victim’s stolen card. The business then suffers the loss of the product and the money they are required to pay back to the credit card company.

The Canadian Anti Fraud Centre offers the following information to help prevent CNP fraud:
Customer Flags
· Orders made from one IP address, but using different names, addresses, and payments.
· Email addresses from free email service.
· Many card numbers provided for one order (cards keep getting declined).
· Purchaser name and cardholder name are different.

How to Protect Yourself
· Know the Red Flags and verify every order request received.
· Before shipping merchandise, verify the information provided by the customer (telephone number, email address, shipping address, etc.).
· Be aware of request for priority shipments for fraud‐prone merchandise.
· Verify priority shipping requests when the shipping and billing addresses don’t match.
· For suspicious orders, contact your payment processor. Verify the security measures to prevent victimization and reduce unwanted chargebacks.
· Never accept overpayments to forward funds to a third party.