Just weeks ago, PW reported on booksellers being scammed out of thousands of dollars in a scheme involving bogus Nigerian book orders. Now there appears to be another scam targeting booksellers. Jill Johnson, owner of Beagle Books in Park Rapids, Minn., didn't even realize she'd been taken until she read a bookseller's letter submitted to the summer issue of the UMBA newsletter.
Last week, Johnson, got a phone call in the store from a "very professional sounding" woman identifying herself as an agent from VISA, inquiring about a possibly fraudulent charge on the store's Visa card.
"The store was full of customers, I was alone in the store, I wasn't thinking very clearly since the store was so busy," Johnson told PW. "It was like they knew to target me in the early to mid-afternoon, the busiest time of the day for me. She asked me if I had made a large purchase on the store credit card. I told her I hadn't. During our conversation, she didn't ask for my card number, she only asked me to read her the last three ["verification code"] numbers on the back of the credit card. I did it, without giving it a second thought."
Visa had called the bookstore before to check on large charges made on her card, so Johnson wasn't suspicious. When she received her UMBA newsletter a few days later, she was shocked to read a warning sent in by a regional bookseller describing in great detail how her husband had been tricked into giving out the verification code numbers on the back of his credit card to somebody posing as an agent from Visa's "Security and Fraud" department.
The bookseller wrote in the UMBA Independent: "You actually say very little, and they never ask for or tell you the card number. But after we were called on Wednesday, we called [Visa] within 20 minutes to ask a question. Are we glad we did. The realVisa Security Department told us it was a scam and in the last 15 minutes a new purchase of $497.99 was charged on our card."
After Johnson read the article, she immediately called Visa and was told they had no record of calling her in the past week. She canceled the card immediately.
Susan Walker, UMBA's executive director, warns booksellers to be vigilant. "It's important for retailers to be alert to potential scams, not only in terms of credit cards they accept, but also be aware that their own credit cards may be in danger. Be alert. As soon as we expose a scam, it seems like there's someone thinking up a new one."
