"Cook" those bastards.
Sorry you are dealing with this kind of BS. You don't deserve it for sure.

I am not a dealer but I am just wondering how a charge back works? It was over 2 months since the pin was received and charge back initiated. Thanks

Just awful the amount of scams going on in the world anymore. I hope you find it! and I hope the person(s) who did this go to prison.

Sucks that the Merchant Agreement is sticking you with the liability if the Card user was known to be fraudulent especially since they issued the card..

I would hope the credit card company will be liable for the losses in addition to catching the criminal. They authorized a charge and charge-back that should not have happened.

Charge-backs happen when a card holder doesn't recognize a charge; usually the result of their CC info being stolen from a merchant they have previously done business with. Card holders are protected in those instances; alas, merchants are not.

That stinks I hope your made whole.

A chargeback should not be allowed after 60 days but the banks break their own rules all the time.
In cases of fraud they do whatever they want.
Its theft.
The merchant takes the loss and writes it off as cost of goods sold. You cant even insure against it as its not a capital loss like stolen money. Nor can you claim a loss of profit.

I have had cashiers checks bounce. Now I take them to the originating bank and cash them before delivering the goods.
I dont deposit them, I learned the hard way.

Mail order of high value goods has risk. Once in awhile you get f'cked. I just hate it.

The chargeback deadline is 120 days. All a merchant can do is exercise due diligence. I process about 20,000 online credit card sales a year and only suffer about a dozen chargebacks. On orders over $500, I make sure there is an online record somewhere (usually whitepages.com) that matches the buyer to their shipping address.

I took a $7000 loss a few years ago, never again... cashiers check only for large purchases.
I offer discounts for cash now and raised my prices a little to help cover losses, but it really sucks out there.

If the perp is reading this I'd like you to know you are lower than dog shit and deserve an old school ass kicking of which I'd be happy to administer. Karma will get you, you pathetic little bitch ass.

I don't normally thumbs up posts with such harsh language, but in this case I feel it's entirely justified.

That sucks. Same thing happened to us for a Spider-Man Vault.

I am sorry JJ. We will keep our ears peeled

JJ anyway to find out the owner of the duplex then they would have the info of who rented it?

The police could probably get them to turn over that info. I doubt they would turn it over to just anyone.

However, I suspect it may be a dead end. If they had enough info to open a credit card using a stolen identity, they probably enough info to rent a living space.

JJ, That sucks, I hope they find the ***holes...before they resell it to some poor unsuspecting person because then they'd be screwed, too.

Does Stern keep track of stolen stuff to deny any possible warranty or service?

Distributors margins are slim enough. Now they have to deal with these types of things. I will add another $500 to the reward. I don't even have a horse in this race but I hate to see when someone good gets screwed over. Find those sons of b******!

To claim reward
Amusement Services of America
786-601-4263
Attn: Jonathan

very frustrating especially someone who is so kind to the pinball community.

Cheers,
Neil.

Totally agree 1000%. People that pull this kind of shit make me so unbelievably angry, especially when they mess with good people. Go drop off a cliff.

That really sucks. I got my amazon account suspended last year because someone used my credit card to buy a 3k laptop. they got into my email and filtered emails from my CC, banks and amazon. They even ordered a second item, but by then I found something was going on. Called amazon and they stopped the second one. Love amazon, but if you need something more then a order update their customer service is useless. The people I needed to talk to were called "account specialist", they only respond with cookie cutter emails.

It was a long 4 months of talking to a wall. Finally sent a message to the CEO and magically my account was unsuspended. Still have no idea how they did it. All my passwords were insanely long with multiple types of characters & my CC was still in my pocket. I do know it happened soon after yahoo got hacked, don't know if they were related.

I always wondered if there was anything more companies could do to prevent this from happening or why there isn't more protection for merchants in these situations. I feel for the merchants, but what do you do? I really hope that piece of shit gets caught.

I hope the guilty party involved in this is held accountable.
Unfortunately as much as I respect law enforcement I have recently been made aware that quite a bit of crime is never even looked into by the police. My girlfriend was rear ended a couple weeks ago. The otherdriver fled the scene and cut thru a bank drive thru. What a rocket scientist, right?!! Everyone knows they have CCTV in all bank exteriors/drive thrus. Anyway her car has several thousand dollars damage and she follows up with the officer who wrote up the accident report several times getting no addl info then gets annoyed and visits the chief at the station only to be told it's a low priority and unless a judge issues a subpoena for the CCTV footage the case is closed. The original officer on the accident scene told her the other driver probably had warrants or was a drug dealer!!!!!
Wouldn't you think they'd get the plate number and go visit the owners residence for a knock and visit.
Nope!
Case closed!
Freaking ridiculous!!

I was once the victim of identity theft. These guys opened bank accounts in my name, credit cards, applied for loans, stole money, you name it. It was a horrible ordeal that took months to straighten out. Trust me, it's not something that I would wish even on my worst enemy. And as we've seen here, it's not just the person whose identity is stolen that's affected. Every institution and business that these guys ripped off using my identity got f***ed as well.

Thieves suck, but unfortunately they are out there in mass numbers and getting more and more clever every day. All you can do is try to be extra vigilant when it comes to protecting your information. Use strong and unique passwords for everything, and try to use some form of two factor authentication whenever possible. Also, make sure to monitor your credit reports like a hawk. In fact, I'd recommend putting a security freeze on all your credit reports. There's really no reason not to, and you can always temporarily lift the freeze if you need to apply for credit or a loan.

Bingo. Did this probably 10 years ago. When I need to apply for credit, such as when I bought my van 4 years ago, I asked the dealer which credit reporting agency they used. I then lifted the freeze while I applied for credit and bought the van. After three days the freeze automatically went back into effect. Kind of a PITA, but a lot less of a PITA then cleaning up your credit report.

sucks.... like a time-delay scam... wait til the last min then backcharge.. I am sure the CC company has dealt with this before and will probably help on the case. JJ is a great guy... get all my new games from him.

YA KNOW... that duchebag that did this little trick is the reason that guys like JJ may raise the cost just that tad bit to cover this shit..... good luck dealing this this, feel for ya

That is why pinside should have a stolen database for people to check serial numbers of stolen machines. It would help the community in the long run and even catch "des osties de trou de culs" like this.

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Stern could do this as well I think. Do they require a serial number for warranty parts/repairs?

Man, this sux for sure.

No serial #'s on any of my warranty work. It was coordinated by the distro, so that's a pretty good control in itself.

But c'mon guys, how many machines are actually stolen a year, and how many would be recovered as a result of a serial # list? My guess is very close to 0.

Wow. That sucks.

What if the serial stickers were simply peeled off?

What then?

Would it just be that forever suspect game with no proof?

I doubt it was the thieves that initiated the backcharge. Most likely what happened is the person whose identity was stolen finally realized it and disputed the charge.

My thinking was that is was a card stolen from a senior citizen at a rest home. They dont use them for years and it took 2 months to see the bills pile up.

JJ, you are amazing!

That is really awesome.

But aren't you the one that should press charges?

You should definitely pass the info to the cc company as they probably had other transactions.

Thats great that you guys connected, and hopefully the seller gets his due. Its a small world, and the pinball community is even smaller. What goes around comes around. Life is much easier being open and honest...we can all sleep better at night.

I'm glad you located the game so quickly, JJ.

That said I really hope someone presses charges so that this doesn't happen again. If it were me I'd be livid.

Great news headed into the holiday weekend!! Now like Sparky says "fry that m'fer"

Care to retract your statement?

I really do believe a small amount of coding from pinside would go a long way to curb pinball theft. Hell with more than 40,000 users that's alot of eyes out for specific games.

Nope. This wasn't found because of a database, it was found because people were talking about it online - those 40K people you mention. Thats where the power is

Overall, active Pinside users are a small % of the community, so if the second buyer wasn't linked to it, it wouldn't have have been located. Also, I still think the # of machines stolen is very small. My point was don't rely on technology itself to solve your problems.

Besides, 1 is very close to 0.

And All I'm saying is that every little bit helps. and yes 1 is close to 0.

Not sure how this can happen. Only ship to billing address, no exceptions ever. Or did they manage to somehow change the billing address with the CC company? In that case the CC should be liable.

I still don't get how this is a good solution. Someone scams a machine, sells it (for cash I'm assuming), and now the distributor and eventual buyer are ok with the outcome without going after the a$$holes that stole the machine in the first place? I know I'm missing something for sure.

More details on the original transaction and subsequent sale would be great.

Very nice of JJ to let him keep the machine when he didn't have to, and kudos to the buyer for letting JJ know because he didn't have to either and then JJ wouldn't know anything. IMO the best result here is for JJ to file theft charges in the jurisdiction where this took place. Hopefully they can find this scammer, as stealing $7k isn't like stealing a loaf of bread from the supermarket.

At minimum the scammer needs to be outed with name/location, so others won't be scammed by him either. If there are no ramifications, he will certainly do it again to somebody else....

Also, so how much did the 2nd guy pick up a NIB Aerosmith Prem for? Was it too good of deal that raised the flag? Was it a CL listing, facebook listing?

Yeah, JJ should press charges with cc company and new Owner should file police report. This Scab belongs behind bars.

I agree! I can't support just leeting this POS off the hook.

JJ! You need to press charges, please!
For all of us that have ever had anything stolen or scammed from us and never had any details to go off of.

Once the person's identity has been stolen, changing the billing address is a piece of cake.

This is where it gets complicated. I'm no expert in these matters, but I believe if the transaction was done in person with a magnetic strip or chip, then the issuer of the card takes the hit. If the card isn't present, then the merchant takes the hit. I'm assuming this transaction was done over the phone.