Fraud on ebay using Virgin Mobile refill card

[Pardus]

Has anyone purchased refill cards for virgin mobile from ebay, a few sellers for offer a $40 refill cards from $32-$35, they are located in the us, but there ads state "Upon check out, please provide your Virgin Mobile phone number in the Paypal note area, or send me an Ebay message."

Hesitant to give out my cell phone number to a seller on ebay only to find out months later that they purchased the refill card with a stolen credit card and now the buyer is stuck paying the full amount of the refill back to virgin mobile to get there account restored.

Have attempted to contact these sellers to verify the are legitimate, none have replied back.

I suspect they have some key generator and they keep trying to load codes that it kicks out until one actually sticks. Can anyone comment on this?

Posting

EBAY shoppers,

This quick guide is to make you aware of many fradulent prepaid refill card offers that are increasingly available on EBAY.

You may see a classified ad, or an auction, offering a T-mobile, Boost Mobile, etc. refill cards for almost 50% of the face value.

Do NOT buy these refills. These sellers (usually not in USA) buy airtime with stolen credit cards and re-sell it on EBAY.

This can happen to you:

After you complete your purchase, you WILL receive a refill confirmation from your cell phone provider, so it will appear as all is well. You've got your refill for an awesome price, you left positive feedback, life is good.. NOT!

Several months later, you will receive a call from your cell company, telling you that you owe them whatever the face value of your refill was, plus tax. This is because the charge on the stolen credit card gets reversed by its legitimate owner, and now YOU owe the full amount to your service provider. When they learn that the credit card used for the refill was stolen, your prepaid account will be suspended, and the purchase will be reported to the authorities.

You will then need to go to the local police office, filie a police report, turn in your receipts from E-bay and Paypal for the transactions to the police, and contact E-bay's and Paypal's fraud departments, to clear your name with the service provider, Ebay, and Paypal.

Red flags to look for:

1) The seller requires for you to provide your cell phone number with your payment (NEVER, ever, give out your cell phone number, when buyng a refill on EBAY.)

2) It is a classified ad, or an auction that contains a link to another web site (the "onlinekey.org" is one of them.)

3) The price is TOO LOW to be true.

4) Broken English in the auction/ad description. (this is usually because the seller does not even speak English because he/she is in China or elsewhere, and used online "language translator" to convert description of the ad into English.)

Below is one such seller:

Ebay Seller: huangke050828 from China
with email - emorycode at gmail.com

Website: onlinekey dot org

Guide created: 04/04/11 (updated 03/17/13)

 

[shortylickens]

I would never purchase ANY sort of card on ebay. For reasons exactly like this.

 

[ImDonly1]

Just buy it from callingmart using their coupons.
Or buy one where they e-mail you the coupon.

Hesitant to give out my cell phone number to a seller on ebay only to find out months later that they purchased the refill card with a stolen credit card and now the buyer is stuck paying the full amount of the refill back to virgin mobile to get there account restored.

Either way it is prepaid, good luck trying to make me pay for refills from 3 months ago. I would just let the account be closed and get a new number elsewhere.

 

[Pardus]

Just buy it from callingmart using their coupons.
Or buy one where they e-mail you the coupon.



Either way it is prepaid, good luck trying to make me pay for refills from 3 months ago. I would just let the account be closed and get a new number elsewhere.

$45 refill card from callingmart is $46.35 and they don't offer coupon codes for virgin mobile.

 

[MotionMan]

Either way it is prepaid, good luck trying to make me pay for refills from 3 months ago. I would just let the account be closed and get a new number elsewhere.

I have never used a pre-paid phone: Do they have your name and/or credit card info?

MotionMan

 

[ImDonly1]

I have never used a pre-paid phone: Do they have your name and/or credit card info?

MotionMan

Yes, your name and address. Credit card only if you have automatic refill. They don't need a credit card since you can just refill by using refill pins from any store on the internet or B&M.

And its not like they check your name or address. You can sign up with any name/address I think.

Straight talk asked me for the last 4 of my SSN I think (not sure why). But I ordered a t-mobile sim from t-mobile to see how coverage was and I signed up with only putting a name and address. The sim card had a $5 balance to test the service out.

 

[ImDonly1]

$45 refill card from callingmart is $46.35 and they don't offer coupon codes for virgin mobile.

Lots of us people have used this website for buying straight talk refills for cheap. Take your chances.
http://www.crazygametime.com/item/virgin-mobile-top-airtime-pin-us-40-45-60/

The payment goes to some random Chinese guy, but all of my pins have worked so far. There was a huge thread on it on slickdeals where everyone bought pins and nothing yet so far. I just checked and the $40 pins for virginmobile are $34 on there. Seems they only have $40 and $60 pins, not the unlimited $45 pins? Not sure which you want. If you get the $60 pin, you will just have the extra $15 left over on your account I think (if you are wanting the $45 pin)?
Slickdeals threads
http://slickdeals.net/f/5666866-Str...Crazy-Game-Time-AT-T-and-T-Mobile-also-15-off
http://slickdeals.net/f/5912242-Virgin-Mobile-Top-up-cards-15-off?page=1

For straight talk, they e-mailed me the pin and I added it to my service. They ask you to put in your phone number on the website to verify you are real/not a scammer.

I found this on howardforums a statement from a reseller

To All our Virgin Mobile Customers, coupon code ca3p-1207 will no longer apply to Virgin Mobile Refills after 5/30. Unfortunately Virgin Mobile is reducing their discounts to all re-sellers by June 1st, to the level that it won't be profitable even if we sell it at non-discounted price!

Seems, no one really can sell virgin mobile at a discount anymore.

 

[quikah]

As far as I can tell the crazygametime pins are legitimate (many people use it), but the whole thing reaks of money laundering. No one else sells these at such a huge discount.

 

[lothar]

When buying from Crazygametime, either use a VISA/AMEX gift card(which you can get on their website without paying any processing fees like you would have if bought at a store) OR create a "virtual" or "temporary" credit card account number if your bank/credit card company supports such a capability.

 

[ImDonly1]

When buying from Crazygametime, either use a VISA/AMEX gift card(which you can get on their website without paying any processing fees like you would have if bought at a store) OR create a "virtual" or "temporary" credit card account number if your bank/credit card company supports such a capability.

I believe they only take paypal.

 

[lothar]

I believe they only take paypal.

Then link either the gift cards or your "virtual" or "temporary" generated credit card number to your PayPal account.

You can also checkout without having a PayPal account.
http://www.crazygametime.com/payment-method/

 

[Pardus]

user id the2bobs from slickdeals says this about crazygametime.

Do not buy from them!!! I purchased a $40 top up card from them last month with no problems. This month I did the same. I purchased my top up card at 5pm and by 10pm they had accessed my Walmart online account and purchased a small $3 item as well as a $60 top card that was to be emailed to them immediately. I guess they took a chance that I would have an account with Walmart and they changed my password, email, etc. I received an email regarding my supposed purchase and a separate email stating I had made account changes. I saw this the next morning and called Walmart. Luckily, they flagged this purchase for review and it never got processed. My account is now locked and if I want to purchase anything from Walmart I need to use a different email address. My credit card info was stored on their site and I guess Walmart didn't ask for a security pin when using a card already stored with them.

The funny thing is when I topped up my VM account with the $40 card purchased from crazygametime.com, it said I had topped up with $50! These people are shady, stay away!

 

[lothar]

user id the2bobs from slickdeals says this about crazygametime.

/yawn.
I have little remorse for people that use the same password everywhere. He probably deserved it.
His entire complaint is attributable to "user error".

Like I said before, I will stick to using gift cards or generating one time virtual/temporary credit card numbers from my bank. CitiBank, Bank of America, and all the other major banks have this feature.
Oh, and making sure your Walmart.com, email, and PayPal accounts all have different passwords also helps.

Crazygametime has always seemed shady from the very beginning. This is nothing new and I knew it before going in. My way of purchasing from them is practically fool proof now.

 

[maniac5999]

Prepaid itself isn't a scam, I used Virgin for two years without problems, and have spent six months on t-mo, with the same. The issue is that their customers come from two camps, frugal people looking to save on their cell bill, and sketchy people without credit. I've always put down my Amex, and had no issues (Amex has some of the strongest customer protections out there) but the prepaid cards are always going to be sketchy.

 

[ecvogel]

I have never used a pre-paid phone: Do they have your name and/or credit card info?

MotionMan

How to save 40 cents. Or in your case .45 cents.
Sign up for rewards program if not automatic
Buy a card and get 45 points.
Buy a card
Look closely durring checkout and apply the .45 cents
After the first purchase you will always have .45 to apply to each purchase on callingmart.

 

[Barpanda]

File a charge back if you have been scammed.