Online game crime?

January 15, 2007 7:35 PM

Internet Credit Card Fraud?

I have an internet buddy through an online video game. He says he charged $50 onto his online account (to recieve cash-only items in the game) using a Visa Gift Card, even when he didn't have that much money on the card itself.

Is he telling the truth? Is this possible? If so, will he get caught and what will happen to him?

(He does live in the US, northen Cali I think.)

posted by lain to Law & Government (6 answers total)

Seems unlikely. Visa Gift cards don't have any overdraft allowance. For his scenario to work, the game company would have to be allowing him to purchase stuff without waiting for the authorization response from their credit card processor. Sure, they could have written their billing system that way, but if they did, he wouldn't be the first person to have discovered the flaw. Perhaps he accidentally used his debit card.

On to the other half of your question...Lets say video game company did hire idiot programmers, who authorize purchase without validating the credit card. If he was able to setup the game account without using a real credit or debit card, investigators will next go to whomever bought the gift card originally. If they paid credit or check, the feds will pressure them to give up the name of the gift card recipient. If the card was bought with cash, they could pull the security footage of the card purchase and start working from that end. For only $50, it's not likely that they'll put a lot of effort into finding him, but with feds, you can't count on that.
posted by nomisxid at 8:11 PM on January 15, 2007

Is this possible?

I don't know about your friend's particular case, but I know that my daughter was once able to charge way more on a mall gift card than the amount for which the card was issued (this was in person, not online)... I panicked when she told me, thinking that we'd be liable for the overage, but that was 2 years ago and nothing ever happened... I think it must have been a glitch on the part of the card issuer or their computer system.
posted by amyms at 8:12 PM on January 15, 2007

It's probably not a crime. People try to charge stuff all the time over the limit of their card. Usually the card is denied. If they did give him the items already, the charge will not go through and they will subtract 50 bucks from his account.
One way or another they will get their 50 dollars back.
posted by lee at 8:13 PM on January 15, 2007

"Feds"? The feds for all practical purposes won't bother with anything under $10,000, much less $50. The merchant bank or video game company will be eating those charges.
posted by rolypolyman at 9:01 PM on January 15, 2007

I agree with RolyPolyMan; I recently had a long closed account "reopened" via a single telephone call from an unknown individual. This crafty fraudsters then proceeded to run up well over ten thousand pounds in charges (I travel a lot and always have a card with very high spending limits) on that card.

I dutifully visited the Metropolitan Police and filed a report but have heard absolutely NOTHING from the authorities since.
posted by Mutant at 11:41 PM on January 15, 2007

Having recently activated two Visa gift cards, I can tell you that when you call to activate cards the automated message service indicates that all charges oversold are automatically the responsibility of the gift card owner, who are to immediately pay the difference back and that by using such cards you understand this agreement yadda yadda.

Now, how they enforce that, I don't know. I know you can buy gift cards directly from Visa, which makes it pretty clear who they're going to annoy for the money (the purchaser). But, if you buy them over the counter at a grocery store, how do they even know? But, it is certainly part of a contract and they will let you do it - sometimes. They caught me trying to buy groceries after I forgot one of the cards only has US$1.17 left on it and just flat out denied the charge.
posted by fujiko at 2:35 PM on January 16, 2007