Fraud Warning

For the first time in my life, I've had a fraudulent charge appear on my bank statement (one which was supposedly made using my debit card). The charge is only $1, plus a 3¢ international transaction fee, but I will have my bank cancel my current card and issue me a new one anyway since it's obvious that somebody who shouldn't have its information, does.

The charge's description was "HYRDRASUPPORT.COM" which is some sort of vaporous company. If you go to that website it updates a counter on some Russian domain (fohfynly.ru) and then redirects to a Vietnamese domain (thienphuphat.vn) which redirects you to yet another website (walgreensprescription.com) where you can order drugs from some Canadian pharmacy.

Google search results indicate that I am not the first person to get hit with fraudulent charges from hyrdrasupport.com within the last week.

The only thing I can think of is that this might be a possible result of the Global Payments data breach that occurred around the end of March, but I have no way of knowing. Nevertheless, you may want to check your bank account(s) to see if you've been hit as well.

A few years back some people got busted for small charges like this. They correctly figured that most people would not notice for years, if ever. Took years to catch them. Maybe I should actually read my statements.

Thanks for the heads up. Yeah I've decided that if I'm not going to keep a checkbook I should at least recognize everything on my statement - it doesn't protect me from skimming but whatever.

One of the Google search results seemed to indicate that the $1 charge is "for the first 2 days" and then it will be $39.95 every 30 days after that, as if I signed up for something, which of course I did not. I have already gone to the bank to cancel my card, and a new one is on its way.

Quote: JB

One of the Google search results seemed to indicate that the $1 charge is "for the first 2 days" and then it will be $39.95 every 30 days after that, as if I signed up for something, which of course I did not. I have already gone to the bank to cancel my card, and a new one is on its way.

That happened to my other half last year but Citibank warned us about it before we even got the statement. New card arrived within a week. It's one of the few times I could say something nice about Citibank.

Follow the money trail even further and you are likely to end up in Encino, a portion of "The Valley" in Los Angeles, CA.

I once sent out a batch of checks to pay bills, then noticed none of them were being cashed. Soon after, a charge for $30 showed up on my bank statement. Someone had stolen a batch of outgoing mail and used the account and routing numbers to sign up for a site called Ghetto Gaggers (classy, huh?) so I had that subscription cancelled, the money refunded, and paid all bills online from then on.

Some scams are sophisticated and some are ham-handed.

If you own a business, a common fraud is to charge monthly services to your land line phone bill. The way they do this, they call you up, and they are trying to sell you something or get you to subscribe to something. However, all they really want is for you to answer with the word 'yes' to one of their questions. Then, through editing, they can utilize that yes as an 'answer' to the question, "Do you want to sign up for this monthly service?" They then have 'justification' to start charging you the monthly fee. They know that business's tend to have higher phone bills, and thus may not notice an extra $10 or $15 a month.