Flower Fraud
We are constantly surprised by the number of people who attempt to make fraudulent orders on our site. Fortunately for us, we have a series of sophisticated security checks which bring most of these to light before we send them out – it is a constant battle and one that we are determined to win, not only for ourselves but also to try to minimise the distress to people who have had their cards used for these transactions.
There are two types of fraudsters that we seem to encounter – the people who place huge orders for cases of vodka or gin and no flowers – after all we are a flower company! - and those more professional fraudsters who operate on a much larger scale and who place orders for women they have met on the internet dating sites.
We in Customer Service have the job of contacting the intended recipients and find it very worrying how many women have met apparently perfectly charming men on internet dating sites; they are very often ‘American business men’ who travel frequently overseas. They ply these women with flowers and wine and chocolates and send messages declaring undying love. Then business starts to take them to Africa on business. Once there, they seem to have the worst possible luck which involves asking these women for money to help them out of hostage situations or to pay large cheques into the UK bank accounts for them to pay hospital bills for their grievously ill family members. These women are not in the slightest bit stupid but these men are really sophisticated fraudsters and for them it is a big and very profitable scam.
Mind you, some of these men are rather less sophisticated and perhaps not that intelligent; our star so far is a gentleman who went under the pseudonym of ‘kingfatsmith’ – really a soubriquet of which to be proud – who, using a stolen credit card, was trying to deliver flowers to a friend in a Police station in Ghana. We’re not entirely sure if the intended recipient was a member of staff or a resident of one of the Police cells. Sometimes, we find it hard to be sure if an order should be processed or not, but on this occasion we had no doubts!
Filed under: Customers, Ethics & Environment, Fraud on November 2nd, 2007
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