Copperhead
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- Jun 24, 2008
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This morning I woke to find I had a reservation for 14 nights this summer (our slow season). Sounds great until you see the reservation is a person from Nigeria
This is basicly the same scam as the email only now they go ahead with the booking, providing the CC # etc.
This one was easy to spot but they could become more savvy so we all need to keep our eyes open on this.
Here's a little more info.. They booked using Nigerian Name, Address and contact info. Email address was a yahoo account. CC name was different than the guest.
I called my merchant fraud department (some just use the word code 10). They looked up the number and provided me with the name of the bank,(and city) they did not have the phone number for this one (bank not doing their part). I Googled it and contacted their fraud dept. This happens to be a large bank (again surprised there was no phone #).
The guy was very surprised that a small business like ours was as on top of this issue. He asked if I had first tried to run the card. NO there were too many red flags I said, knew it was fraud from the moment I saw the reservation. I said we are not a group of old grandmothers here, some may be grannies but we still are sharp and very business oriented! We don't sit around knitting!!!
So this is heads up, they are now taking rooms out of inventory. Keep a close eye on your bookings and who is booking. You want to get those rooms back in inventory ASAP.
This one was easy to spot but they could become more savvy so we all need to keep our eyes open on this.
Here's a little more info.. They booked using Nigerian Name, Address and contact info. Email address was a yahoo account. CC name was different than the guest.
I called my merchant fraud department (some just use the word code 10). They looked up the number and provided me with the name of the bank,(and city) they did not have the phone number for this one (bank not doing their part). I Googled it and contacted their fraud dept. This happens to be a large bank (again surprised there was no phone #).
The guy was very surprised that a small business like ours was as on top of this issue. He asked if I had first tried to run the card. NO there were too many red flags I said, knew it was fraud from the moment I saw the reservation. I said we are not a group of old grandmothers here, some may be grannies but we still are sharp and very business oriented! We don't sit around knitting!!!
So this is heads up, they are now taking rooms out of inventory. Keep a close eye on your bookings and who is booking. You want to get those rooms back in inventory ASAP.