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Joe Abrams of Carolina Colubrids and Outfitters scammed us good

K

Ken Foose

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A fellow using the name Joe Abrams, claiming to be the owner of Carolina Colubrids and Outfitters, of Lexington, SC, has ripped us off for a total of $490.
Here's how it played out:
He called us last week, asking about some hatchlings we have for sale. After a bit of haggling, and a lot of talking, a purchase was agreed upon. He claims that because of the case of some hot snakes being sent UPS and/or FedEx, neither of these companies were willing to ship herps into or out of South Carolina (could someone verify this for me please)? He requested Delta Dash, which we agreed to even though it was such a small shipment, and Dash costs more then overnight carrier services. He used a credit card for the purchase and shipping. It checked out on our end as a good card. Several hours later, he called back and purchased two more snakes, using a different card. This one he claimed was his wifes, since his was almost maxed out from our last transaction. Once again, the card checked out fine, and we boxed up the snakes, and sent them on the way. He called me the next day, thanked us for great looking animals and great service, and said he would be calling again next week for another purchase.
Here is what has happened since then:
I got a call from a man from Columbia, SC, asking just exactly what he had charged to us on his credit card. He still had the card, but had never heard of us before. He thought that perhaps a relative had stolen the card # from his wife's purse, and would look into it on his end. Needless to say, he has filed a claim with his card company, and we will soon debited the money from our account. I called the phone # that "Joe" had provided, which was to a pet store in Lexington. Upon questioning a staff member there, it was made clear that they had no clue who this fellow was, and denied having any knowledge of him or this transaction. I was given an address by "Joe," that according to the first card holder, does not exist. Today, I got a call from the second owner of the second stolen card #, with basically the same results. This chargeback will be for $105. The first charge was for $385, which included charges for Delta Dash.
In the first contact with us, he claimed to have been making most of his wholesale purchases from Ben Seigal, on an almost biweekly basis. He claimed he liked the looks of the hatchlings we are producing, and wanted to try them out in his business. He got us good, very clean little job of scamming us.
Here's what we got on him:
Joe Abrams
1121 Harden St.
Lexington, SC 29073
The first card owner claims that three other purchases were made using his card # to other stores in South Carolina, all of them being retail pet stores, all on the same day. He also informed us that there is no Harden St. in Lexington, but there is one in Columbia.
The phone #s "Joe" used to contact us were either from a cell phone, or from a blocked #, we won't be able to establish where he called from until Monday when we get results from our phone company.

So, here's the skinny:
Joe Abrams of Carolina Colubrids and Outfitters of Lexington/Columbia, SC is a major thief and scammer. Beware of him. I am also asking at this time for a bit of help from anyone in the area that is willing to assist us in finding this person, and recovering our property or money owed. I will split any returned funds 50/50 with whoever helps us find this man and gets our property or money back. He seems to be stealing the cc #s from people, not the actual cards. He might or might not have had to use the Joe Abrams name to pick up his package from us at Delta, depending on how strict their security is or is not.

This is just a heads up to all of you hard working, honest business persons, and a request for help in stopping this guy from doing this to anyone again. Hey, with over 30 shipments a week, and this being our first theft, I guess I can't complain, but it sure does piss me off.

Thanks for reading all of this.
 
Ken, when you say the cards

checked out good!, What does that mean exactly? Because in todays c.c. market, usually some additional verification needs to be corroborated before an approval is given.

Like a billing address, the name of the card recipient, etc.
One gets the feeling after reading your post, that you were marked for this scam. This guy whoever he is , should be behind bars.
 
Yeah, it's a bummer that the charges got approved. I wonder if the approval policy is set by the Card issuer, the business, or what, because sometimes when I use my card it is approved even though my shipping address is different than my billing address. Maybe, it's the choice of the business, because some places won't even let me ship to a different address, even if the card is approved. It's getting more and more common for them to ask for that 3 digit number on the back of the card, if all transactions required that number it would stop instances like the OP's because you have to have card in hand, and not just the numbers. Another possibility is that the purchaser is really the cardholder and is running some kind of scam.
 
We got name and address verification on both cards. The problem is that this guy did not steal the cards, it appears he was able to steal the entire identity. He had all the billing information that we needed to feel safe with this transaction. It was not much different then the hundreds we do every year. We are going to eat the loss, that's just part of doing business. However, I sure would like to find out who this guy is, where he is, and so on. I will make it worth the trouble to get him out of the scam business. I don't think he just us, since there were some other pet shops also hit, and these were local shops in South Carolina. I would be interested to find out if these purchases were made in person, and if so, how. He did not have the cards, the owners still have the cards. Anyway, it's not enough to keep me up at night, but there goes that tank of gas I was saving up for. Thanks in advance for anyone that can help me out here.
 
Jerry, you're right....

Ken.... When someone orders something from me, and they give me their cc.... my terminal (in my house) REQUIRES the card number, the EXACT ADDRESS OF THE CREDIT CARD where it is billed to, and the EXACT ZIP CODE for that address.... if EITHER of those items don't match up, the terminal will show "no match", "partial match", or "EXACT MATCH".... if I get anything but "exact match", a phone call ensues to verify their info.... If you get an exact match, and the card holder tries a scam, they WILL NOT get their money back....
Be VERY CAREFUL when doing cc charges when no signature is obtainable....
OR, as Underground Reptiles does it.... you send them the cc charge slip in a SASE, and when they return it SIGNED, THEN the shipment goes out.... it's the only way to properly protect yourself against something like this....

Talk to your cc people about upgrading your terminal.... SOON!!....

Neil
 
My terminal is up to date, state of the art, brand new even. It must verify zipcodes, and if needed, addresses to allow the charge to go through. All that was done to the computers satisfaction. We ship about 50 boxes a week, and to send out the card slip to be signed would just not work for us. However, I would still love to have someone from the Lexington area check this out for me, just for fun.
 
Ken.... Did you ship the animals to the billing address of the card??.... If so, then I'm very surprized that the cc people debited your account, because you did everything that they require??.... If you DIDN'T ship to the billing address, I would certainly review your policies....

Neil
 
One thing that I saw done awhile back that I think might have prevented this situation is to require the a phone cc sale be followed up with the buyer faxing you a photocopy of both the credit card and their driver's license. It's not going to eliminate the possibility of credit card fraud, but it will reduce it.

Yes, it does slightly inconvenience the buyer, but I view the fraud deterrent as being a greater good than the convenience of a signature free transaction.
 
The comment the last person made about the faxing a copy of the license and all is a good idea and they need to also write that they are giving permission for thus and such company to charge a certain amount and sign it to reduce charge backs for over the phone sales.

I am curious about something... did the guy intially contact you with email or by phone?? If by email; do you have some of his emails saved or at least his email address?
Thanks for your time
 
Neil, the package was sent Delta Dash to the Columbia Airport. The main reason for this post was not to go over my security, obviously it was flawed, and will be reviewed once again. The reason for the post was to warn others about this guy, and hopefully, just hopefully, get someone in the area of Lexington to help me out on this matter, and recieve a nice reward for it to boot. Ken, thanks for the suggestion, we will look at that also as we adjust our methods here. Running any business is a matter of adaptation, it is an ongoing learning experience, you live, you learn, you adapt, or you die. It took years of badgering by my friends and staff before I was convinced to even own a computer, much less try to sell animals over the internet at retail prices. It would never work, with all the wholesale animals up for sale on the net. Once again, we adapted, and make a sizeable chunk of change on the internet now. Go figure. Also, just to inform, there were no emails between us and "Joe" that we are aware of, just three phone calls, two for orders, and one the next day telling us the shipment arrived in great shape, and to say thanks lol. He actually thanked me for letting him rip me off, although I did not know it at the time. Ah, well, at least he was polite about it.
 
I am so sorry that happened to you. You did a good deed by posting here and warning the rest of the reptile community; after all snakes are not like stereos, there is a much smaller market for fencing them. I hope this guy gets caught, and that you get your $ back.
 
Ken, I think the best course

of action would be to fight the chargeback. You may loose, but I would certainly give it a try. I would also see if Delta has any video capapbility when someone picks up shipment. I just find it rather unusual for someone to steal someones identity, and persue a life of crime stealing reptiles. It just does not make any sense to me. Anyway, I hope these louses get caught.
 
Jerry, we're checking into that today. We are having our phone records double checked, and calling Delta in Columbia and requesting any assistance in this matter. Frankly, this is just a bizzare case for us. The guy gets ahold of a couple of card numbers, calls us, and haggles on price for a long, long time. Then he calls us upon recieving the animals, and complements us on them, and tells us for sure he will do business with us again in a week. Just odd behavior for a guy who must know this is a one shot deal. Why bother haggling on price when it's not your money? All of this was obviously ment to get us to lower our guard, and damn, it worked! We'll keep you posted if we have any results. Thanks
 
Hey man im located right around where your talking about. Im in west columbia right on the edge of lexington everything your mentioning is pretty close to me if I could help in any way let me know I could do a little driving but nothing illegal lol :) sorry to hear what he did to ya
 
very odd...

Yeah Ken, his behavior sounds very odd, but like you said...it dropped your guard. I was wondering though...if the transaction was OKed by the credit card company, wouldn't THEY have to eat the charges? It's up to the card holder to report stolen cards, but in this case where just the number was stolen, I should think that it's the card company's fault for approving the transaction. They should have been more vigilant about monitoring fraud. I think this guy is a pro at this scam.....gaining your trust....keeping the transaction below a certain amount so the card company DOESN'T question the transaction....and using Delta to avoid a home delivery. By the way, I got one shipment of snakes through our Minneapolis Delta freight office......after I gave them the tracking number, they never asked for any ID or anything to prove that I was who I said I was. Pretty sloppy!!

At any rate, I'm sorry to hear you got scammed and I hope they catch this guy AND you get credited by the card company!!

Scott Nellis
 
Maybe in reading these posts I missed something, but what is the possibility that two parties are in collabition with each other, one to make the purchase and one who owns the card and says improper purchases were made? Just a thought

Mike Blackston
 
The thought of a a con job also ran through our minds. In fact, we even thought it might be an honest mistake at first. The first person to report his card minused mentioned that a family member could have been to blame, since she had all of the sudden aquired a few new pets over the past week. The thought we had was Joe had a maxed out card, and "borrowed" a friends, which turned out of course to be the unknowing owner. This possibility caused us to pause in our worries, until the second card owner gave us a call. I doubt that both of them would be in on the scam, although this scam is nothing like I've seen before, and boy, I have seen them all. I'm still working on the card companies, but am failry doubtful that we will get any help from them. I would be interested in finding out what the address Joe gave us is, Tim, if you would like to help us out on this, we would be more then grateful. Thanks
 
Ken Foose said:
The thought of a a con job also ran through our minds. In fact, we even thought it might be an honest mistake at first. The first person to report his card minused mentioned that a family member could have been to blame, since she had all of the sudden aquired a few new pets over the past week. The thought we had was Joe had a maxed out card, and "borrowed" a friends, which turned out of course to be the unknowing owner. This possibility caused us to pause in our worries, until the second card owner gave us a call. Thanks
Click to expand...

That was my thought also, as you can see by my post on page one. Another thing that makes me wonder is, if I read your post right is that 2 different cardholders called you in about a week? How did they find out so quick, and get your number. Couple years ago I had false charges on my card, didn't find out about it till I got my bill. Course now that I can monitor my charges online, I notice quicker, but it still takes a couple days for a charge to show up on my card, and then another day or more for the actual info to show up (ie. the actual contact info of where it was charged) and sometimes the info is very basic, like some kind of codes with no phone number or anything. So I was just curious how supposedly both these people found out at about the same time. On the flip side, if as alleged these are two totally random people, you think that it could be found out how the scammer came across their numbers, without having the actual cards.
 
Can you ask the two cardholders if they are willing to contact each other and see who they both know in common, ie., do they both know this relative that has suddenly aquired these new pets, or her boyfriend, etc.
 
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