Originally Posted by **********

Fun read, but we have something better that you are free to borrow.

Every once in a while we get some "friendly fraud" guys, who basically spent money chatting with girls on our sites, then charge it back.

We will call the card holder, and very politely, attempt to establish the reason of his chargeback. 99% of the time they will say the card was unauthorized. While talking to him we send him an email and ask him to reply to it, as a log that we are handling the issue for him. In his reply email header is his IP address of course.

We ask him what he think happened, and he will usually tell a long winded story about how maybe his "friend used his card" or "maybe the waiter at that restaurant is the thief". While he talks, we compare his IP address to the purchase logs and especially to the chat logs to make sure they all line up. Then I hit him with this:

"Well sir I am so sorry this happened to you. We will of course refund your credit card (which is actually already done since he charged-back), and we will file a police report in your city".

"Wait. What? Why?" he usually says.

".. Well sir, your card was stolen and used illegally. We will forward the details of the transaction and the IP Address of the user who made the purchase, and all of the chat logs that show each message from that IP address."

At the same time, I look up the owner of the IP Address (Verizon for example), and continue with "We will also forward a copy of the report to Verizon. As this transaction was illegal so was the use of their network".

Usually, the guy will start with "Oh ... um... yeah.... I...."

Then just to drive it home, we'll end it with "Oh, and the police may come to visit you to take a statement. They are so busy it may take a few days, who knows. They will have the report already of course but if you want I can send a copy to you as well and ----"

At this point he either offers to repay the chargeback, saying "I don't want to go through that trouble", or he pisses his pants in fear. One guy actually promised to send a check once, which he did and actually cleared.

The above isn't always successful, but it sure is fun.