He learned about the Moscow trip after checking the app on his phone and seeing the fare breakdown Uber provided.
"It was my Uber account," he said. "Someone has literally logged on to the app as me in Russia and taken a taxi. It's really bizarre."
Laird's beneficiaries took a 13km trip from the city's Airport District, ending in Moscow's picturesque Khamovniki neighbourhood.
The journey appeared to have ended at a bus terminal at Luzhnetskaya Naberezhnaya, near the Moskva River.
Laird said he had never been to Russia.
The app showed the Muscovite taxi driver picked up its passengers in a BMW M5 luxury sedan, Laird told the Herald on Sunday.
"They got a nice ride. I haven't been picked up by an M5 in Auckland for a bit."
Laird said although the $47 fare was more than any taxi trip he'd ever taken in Auckland, he was less worried about the money and more about potentially wider security issues. "I would have thought they'd be bank-grade security, in terms of not having people able to pose as someone else's account."
He called his bank yesterday and asked it to dispute the charge.
He expected to be reimbursed.
Bank staff told him they were dealing with "a fair bit of fraud" but they did not mention Uber.
He said he'd been using the app for two years and this was the first problem he'd had with it.
Laird, who works in logistics, said he wondered if someone had "dropped the ball" on security - but he'd keep using Uber.
"It's great price, it's convenient and it's a great service."
The identity of the people who took the taxi was, for now, a mystery.
Uber did not respond to a request for comment.
The company website said the most common fraudulent activity Uber detected was when riders created multiple accounts to get free rides with a "first-time users" promotion.
Uber was launched overseas in 2009 and now offers services in hundreds of cities worldwide.
