Late in the day yesterday, my mobile phone rang showing a number with a 330 Ohio area code. I thought, “That ringtone sounds like a fart. I need to change it.” A mechanical voice said, “This is Daniel Padilla from Amazon. There has been a fraudulent charge on your account. Your account is compromised. Press One to speak with a representative”.
(My ringtone is a digeridoo. It replaced the sonar ping a year and a half ago. When I worked on the trading floor, guys would hide my phone under a coat because they couldn’t stand the bomb-whistle ringtone that I used back then. The current ringtone sounds like, well, a fart. I remind myself to change it every time I get a call.
The ringtone on my wife’s personal phone is soft, melodic and soothing.)
I get calls from the credit card company with reports of potentially fraudulent transactions all the time. Once they called to ask me if I had really bought $1,000 of tickets to a Pitbull concert (my middle aged white guy response: “What is ‘Pitbull’?”) Online purchases of software, mobile phones, computers and gaming accessories are generally suspect. More often than not, the calls alert me to legitimately fraudulent transactions. When that happens, I thank the lady (salamat means “thank you” in Tagalog), cancel the charge and ask them to issue me a new card. I am always grateful when the credit card company, or the credit card company’s algorithms, catch these transactions. So – the call sounded legit. I pressed One.
When Daniel Padilla came on in person, he had a thick Indian accent. He continued where the robo call had left off. “We have information about a potentially fraudulent transaction. We believe that your Amazon account is compromised. Did you buy an iPhone 6 for $745?”
“No.”
“It was sent to an address in Austin. Do you live in Austin?”
I did live in Austin once, some time ago. I still have a friend who lives there, but he would never steal from me.
“Texas, you mean?”
“Correct.”
“I do not live in Texas.”
“Well, this is compromised.”
“You keep breaking up. I am having trouble hearing you.”
“That is because of the storm. I can call you back”
I assumed that Daniel was sitting in Bangalore, but it was snowing in the Midwest, and Amazon might have servers and hardware in that part of the country. After a minute, my phone rang with the caller ID ‘Amazon’. When I picked it up, I heard nothing. I shouted “Hello?” Hello?” a few times, and the line went dead. Thirty seconds later, it rang again with the same caller ID. Danielle was on the line.
“Can you hear me now, sir?”
“Yes, that is much clearer.”
This seemed a bit off. You never speak with the same person twice at a legitimate call center, unless you have escalated a complaint to the highest supervisor. My Spidey sense started to tingle.
“Sir – do you use an iPhone or an Android?”
“I don’t use fucking Apple products.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sometimes I use an Android, sometimes a PC.”
“We will need to verify the fraudulent transaction. Can you log on to your Amazon account, please?”
“Done.”
I had logged on before Daniel called back. My Orders menu showed an RFID-blocking credit card case due to arrive on Sunday and a pair of military-compliant coyote tan jungle boots size 10.5W. Legitimate orders, both. I did not see an order for an iPhone 6. That surprised me, because fraudulent credit card transactions generally need to show up on your account in order to raise a red flag.
“Sir – to cancel the fraudulent order, you will need to place a dummy order, which we will cancel immediately. Can you please type the following code into the search bar at the top of the page? BMC50”
I typed it in. A list of products appeared. An unlocked iphone. A virtual reality headset. Some other random shit.
“OK, I’m there. What should I look for.”
“If you scroll down, sir, you will see a link to a $50 amazon gift card?”
“Sorry, no.”
“Please re-type the code, sir. That is P as in Philadelphia, M – Mary and C – Charlie, plus the numbers 5-0.”
Every first-year phonology student remembers that voiceless stops are aspirated in word-initial and stressed syllable-initial position English, but not in other environments. Thus, the “P” in “Pot” is different from the “P” in “spot”. If you pronounce “Pot” with an unaspirated “P”, it sounds more like “bot” than it does like “pot”, to a native speak. Certain languages including, I suspect, Daniel’s native language, do not aspirate this class of phonemes in these environments. Whence the confusion between “B” and “P”.[1]
“Ah – there it is. Yes, I see the gift card.”
“Could you please click on it, sir?”
This was fishy. When credit cards remediate fraudulent transactions, they just cancel them. You don’t have to buy something and then return it, for the cancellation to be effective. When you set up ACH capabilities with a bank, the bank will send and immediately return a payment whose amount you need to confirm, but that is always a de minimis, odd sum– say $0.06, or $0.17. Fifty bucks? Fuck you. I opened a new tab in the browser and typed in “Amazon fraudulent charge scam”. The first hit was a warning put out by the FTC about people like Daniel.
“Daniel? I will call the number on the Amazon website. I would like to contact your in-house fraud department directly.”
“Sorry?”
“I want to call Amazon.”
“But you are speaking to Amazon now!”
“Of course – but I want to confirm that I really am speaking with Amazon –“
Click. He didn’t even say goodbye.
I do not think that I compromised my information in any way. I told Daniel that I do not live in Texas, but I didn’t tell him where I do live. I didn’t buy his gift card. He knows that I use an Android phone and browse the web with a PC, but so do lots of people. He had my name and phone number before he called me. I did not give him my account number or password, and I spoke to him with an instrument different from the one with which I logged onto my account. Unless he can get information about me simply by connecting with me by phone, I do not think I gave him anything that he can use.
But – here’s the thing. His grift is really slick – even better than the one I wrote about here, in which the mark is given a false sense of security by the apparent bifurcation of the seller and the escrow agent (by contrast, the grift that I wrote about here was just dumb, this one was heavy-handed and clearly written by a non-native speaker, and Joe Gurry grifts in person and is beneath contempt). Daniel gained my trust by posing as fraud-prevention personnel. I get legitimate calls like that, for which I am grateful, all the time. He did not ask for my account number up front. His accent fit. He deflected any anger I might have felt because of receipt of the robo call by directing it toward the bastard who he said used my money to send an iPhone to Texas. It was only when he got into the mechanics of the grift – the inability to cancel the order immediately, the gift card – that he lost me. I am sure he made plenty of money in the other 23 hours and fifty-five minutes of the day, scamming old ladies and lonely men in cramped apartments and, unfortunately, mobile homes.
After we got off, I went into the Amazon site to look for information about how to investigate fraudulent charges. The headline above their knowledge base says, “Does ‘Amazing’ Have a Phone Number?” I do not know the adjectival form of the term ‘Goniff’, but if Daniel ever chooses to have a Web presence, I suggest he head it with, “Does ‘Gonifferous’ Have a Phone Number?” He could also try ‘Gonifficatious’, ‘Goniffic’, ‘Goniffical’, ‘Goniffeous”, or “Goniffy”. He can list his profession as Goniffication. He will, of course, have to check himself into the clinic for Gonifferhea every once in a while. With luck, a good-hearted nurse will infect him with something less treatable.
[1] A call center worker says she used to say, “’P’ as in ‘pneumonia’?” “’P’ as in ‘pterodactyl’?” with snotty customers. I was not quick enough to seize the opportunity to use that line.