The first fraudulent order didn’t have a fishy email address.
The billing address matched the credit card number, and the order included the security code on the back of the card. The shipping address didn’t raise any red flags, either. The order amount, about $200, wasn’t large enough to arouse suspicion.
Nonetheless, St. Peters-based DiscountCoffee.com, which sells coffee and supplies, was recently notified by a credit card company that the number had been stolen.
The perpetrator had managed to get past not only the fraud alert screening built into the website’s online payment system, but also a fraud security team that manually reviews transactions.
“We see all kinds of fraud,” said Cherri Newbury, president of the midsize company, which has been in business since 1998. “But most of it is where the addresses don’t match. So this one was a surprise to us. It’s the most sophisticated we’ve seen.”
Then it got even stranger. The company tracked down the person at the shipping address who was to receive the package. He apparently did not know he was a part of a scam.
“That is when we figured out how deep it was,” she said. “They thought they were working for a legitimate company.”
Officials say scammers often troll online job boards or post ads for part-time work out of people’s own homes. They receive packages and then just have to put a new shipping label on them, with the destination usually being overseas.
DiscountCoffee.com recently tracked down a reshipper who lived in a small town in Mississippi. Newbury said the man broke down in tears when told of the criminal activity. He said he had been desperate for a job, having been out of work for two years.
With unemployment still high, Newbury worries that other folks desperate for work will be lured into these jobs and find themselves ensnared in criminal activity.
This sort of reshipping scam using stolen credit cards is unfortunately not uncommon, said Sgt. Jeff Owen, the supervisor for the digital forensic investigative unit of the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
The illegally purchased items are usually sent overseas and resold.
“Everybody loves coffee,” he said. “You can’t trace it. There’s no serial number on it.”
He’s seen similar scams involving small, lightweight and easy-to-ship items that are high in value, such as tobacco products, printer ink and electronics.
Many credit card companies will decline charges on items that are sent abroad, he said. The thieves try to get around that by sending the items first to domestic addresses before they are forwarded to foreign destinations.
That’s where the reshipping middlemen come into play. The criminals often post ads saying they are a missionary working overseas and need to have the items shipped to them, Owen said. The helpers usually don’t make a lot of money — just $400 to $500 a month.
“Most times, they aren’t aware what they are getting,” he said. “It shows up and they put a new shipping label on it right there.”
The cases often are difficult to prosecute, especially since the culprits are overseas.
As for how the credit card numbers were stolen, Owen said it’s hard to pinpoint.
“People freak out about typing in their credit card number at Amazon, but then they will walk into any restaurant and hand over their card,” he said.
In many cases, Newbury said the people whose credit card numbers are compromised don’t even know about it until DiscountCoffee.com contacts them.
This isn’t the first time the folks at DiscountCoffee.com have tried to track down scammers. Nearly a decade ago, the company helped uncover a crime ring in Washington state in which two women stole the financial records of at least 25 people — apparently by opening their mail.
They then tried to order 100 boxes of allergy pills containing pseudoephedrine, an ingredient used to make methamphetamine, from the website.
In this most recent wave of fraud, Newbury said the company has found a way to flag the orders before they are processed. It gets one every couple of days. The orders are for name-brand products such as Starbucks Via coffee, Dolce flavored syrups and Lipton tea.
And talk about funny timing. Soon after her company started grappling with this recent wave of fraud, Newbury started receiving emails advertising jobs to reship products.
Now she knows only too well what those jobs are all about.