As a small business owner looking to make it big, it is very easy to get swept up in the idea of having a big sale. This person from what seemed like a ligitimate distribution company requested a very large amount of merchandise adding up to a fair chunk of change. There were several emails discussing policy and terms of sale, etc. Finally I received a credit card number to charge to. I entered the information into an undisclosed online credit card authorization terminal. All was cleared. It occurred to me to make sure to validate the address and name that I had with the credit card company before i did anything else. Luckily for me and the REAL card owner I did that. The card was indeed stolen. It's very apparent as to why the "buyer" was so ademate about things shipping in two weeks. Not to mention the "buyer" also put off sending me the credit card information until the beginning of the month when the real cardholder may not have noticed the charge until the end of the month.
There isn't much that comes up for this sort of scam against business owners when researching. we all know now about the advance fee, orphan, and lottery scams coming from Abidjan and Nigeria but this one seems fairly new and all business owners should beware! Sales transactions stemming from Africa=BIG RED FLAG! no sale is ever worth that aggravation!