Consumer Watchdog: Business pays for crooks' sins

Deborah Kelly called Paymark when a customer's request set off alarm bells. Photo / Neville Marriner

Despite checking credit card status, packaging firm is left with $23,000 bill after being targeted by scammers

A small business owner who says she did "everything right" has been ordered to refund a $23,000 payment that came from a stolen credit card.

Deborah Kelly, who runs a New Plymouth-based packaging company, said she thought she had been cautious enough when she received an order from someone wanting to send a large amount of stock to a charity in Africa.

The customer paid $15,000 via credit cards and added an extra $8000 - asking Kelly to pay the freight company on their behalf.

Kelly was asked to transfer the money to the freighters' Ghana-based bank account before they collected the order in Auckland.

Naturally, this set off alarm bells. Kelly called Paymark to check if the transaction had gone through.

She says Paymark gave the "all clear", so she visited her local ASB Bank and saw the money - $23,000 in total - had arrived in the company account.

Reassured the transaction was genuine, Kelly sent the money to the freight company through her ASB business banking facility.

Six weeks later, the bank called to tell her the $23,000 deposit into her account was fraudulent - and the transaction would be reversed.

It left Kelly wondering what more she could have done to protect herself.

"I rang Paymark to verify the credit card transactions before I did anything.

"I physically went down to the bank and said, 'Is this legitimate? Is this okay to be sending money here'?"

Kelly went to the police, but was told the matter was a civil dispute with the bank.

"I'm the victim of the fraud. I'm being ripped off $23,000," she said.

ASB cards, transactions and payments manager Shaun Drylie said verifying a card was not a fail-proof way to avoid fraud. "Authorisation simply confirms the card has not been reported stolen, and it has sufficient available credit.

"It does not confirm the person initiating the transaction is the card's rightful owner."

He said it was the business' responsibility to establish a customer was genuine and authorised to use the card.

If the card was reported stolen within three months, any transactions made by phone or internet could be reversed. But while credit card transactions could be reversed, international money transfers were final.

"Once the money is sent, it cannot be charged back later, and in almost all cases cannot be recovered," Drylie said.

Paymark manager Paul Whiston advised business owners in Kelly's situation to contact the credit card company and ask for the card-holder to be contacted to confirm they were aware of the pending transaction.

Kelly's experience is all too familiar to NetSafe executive director Martin Cocker.

He said scammers had become more and more sophisticated - and no longer exclusively targeted naive, elderly and computer-illiterate people.

Incident reports to Netsafe website TheOrb.org.nz showed small businesses were particularly vulnerable to the latest money-laundering scams.

"There's not a lot you can do to protect yourself," Cocker said.

He said the credit card details were probably stolen when the card-holder let it out of sight (for example, in a restaurant). "Credit card details are traded in huge volumes online. There's a whole industry set up to steal people's details."

Have you been scammed? Email celeste.anstiss@hos.co.nz