So I checked my bank balance yesterday to pay a friend of mine for some camping expenses. I raised an eyebrow when I saw that I was down $880 for no reason, especially since there wasn't an ATM in a 25km radius around the camping site that we were at!
Within a few minutes, I called up CWB and had my Master Card canceled and basically stopped all financial transactions with immediate effect. I let them know about what had happened and I must say, they were very supportive and assured me that I would get my money back. I wasn't happy with just the assurance as I had to find out the who, the what, the why, the when and the how, but the bank was not interested in these details at the moment. They were more interested in getting my money back to me. Fair enough.
Being the inquisitive character that I am, I backtracked every single transaction that had taken place in the last few hours. Turns out that someone had hacked into my Paypal account, which I did not know at that point of time, and used my information to buy a perfume and a "foreign purchase", with a total expenditure of $880! In my bank statement, this expense appeared as three different transactions from New York and the United Kingdom, but the amount added to $880!
So I figured that the transaction must have taken place via my Paypal. I logged on and saw the transaction immediately. I raised more than an eyebrow this time. I raised a storm. Fortunately for me, I received an email from an ebay seller saying:
"Hi you still haven’t sent address, and ive just found out it , it cant be sent via post , as its battery is built in."
Huh???? What? What was this guy talking about? I had not ordered anything, leave alone a device with a battery in it! So I replied to his email asking him what it was all about. Within a few minutes, I had a reply from her (turns out the seller was a sweet lady):
"The ipad that you bought from me off ebay, and wanted sent to Indonesia, you paid via paypal"
In the next few milliseconds, my thoughts were - "iPad! Woohoo! Wait! What iPad? WTF? YES! Gotcha you li'l sucker!"
I emailed the seller back saying that she shouldn't mail the iPad anywhere and explained the whole situation. She was onto it immediately and refunded my money within a couple of minutes.
In the meantime, I called up Paypal and they assured me that I won't lose my money as well. However, in the emails between me and the eBay seller, I knew exactly who bought the iPad, where it was bought from, when it was bought and where the dude wanted it to be shipped - Indonesia!
Neither the bank nor Paypal was interested in this information and said it could take weeks or months to find the culprit. I was giving them the information on a silver platter. And to be honest, it took me less than 3 hours to find out all of this information. Cool huh?
In hindsight, I also noticed that I had not received any confirmation from eBay informing me of this purchase, nor an email from Paypal with a receipt of this purchase. So in case you are wondering if you could be a possible victim, the answer is, YES.
Check your finances every day. I have been in the habit for the last 3 years. It is one of the things I do within the first few minutes of waking up - Read the news back home, check emails, check bank account, check facebook (.... don't we all? :) )
So at the moment, I'm stuck without a debit card, which means I have to go to the bank to get some cash... if I have any left in my account, that is!
P.S. Nobody messes with AK or somebody gonna get-a hurt real bad :)
