THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 18, 1995 TAG: 9512160172
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Talk of the Town
LENGTH: Short : 29 lines
Anywhere there are credit cards, there are fraud artists.
Last month, Basse's Choice Plantation was stung shortly after the Smithfield-based catalog merchant began selling its food products through the America Online computer network.
About $300 of the first $30,000 in orders Basse's Choice received from AOL subscribers were fraudulent, says Alexa Ricketts, the company's director of operations.
Basse's Choice made the mistake of shipping to several buyers before it had completed credit-card authorizations.
Now if it fails to get an OK on a credit-card order, it calls the customer to find out why. Chances are the problem is an expired card or an exceeded credit-card limit, Ricketts says. The purchase is often switched to another card.
But the ``customer'' may also have stolen a credit card or invented a fraudulent credit-card number. by CNB