A little bit about one of the most fraudulent and unclassified orders we've got in the history of miniBB: at March 4, 2011, we've got an order via 2checkout from

Gabriel Candiani
IP: 74.103.213.18
IP Location: East Greenwich ( United States )
Email: gcandiani@gelank.com
Phone provided: 954-243-9068

The order was just about $6, for miniBB Captcha module.

As soon as the order has been verified on 2checkout.com, we have sent the information regarding download of the Captcha package. As we see in our records, this customer has been logged into the customers area and downloaded the module successfully.

After that, we've got no news from the customer, however at March 18, 2011, the following email came from 2checkout regarding this order:

I was quite surprised to experience chargeback for nothing. During miniBB orders history, we've experienced some fraudulent deals from the stolen credit cards or PayPal accounts, but here, obviously, the customer was doing the chargeback intentionally.

We have replied back with out negative comments and misunderstanding to 2checkout 3 times, but we have never got any reply or help from them regarding this issue. In result, at April 14, "the deal" has been finished:

We also have emailed the customer directly, but never got any reply back.

That's how the online orders system works. Somebody may pay you with a valid non-stolen credit card, get each and every product you offer (even a tangible one), then call the bank and say "s/he doesn't recognize the transaction and hell don't know what it was for". The bank will issue a refund not depending on the arguments the other side provide. And nobody will give you a proper info on the merchant side.

The most critical moment in this story is that I don't understand, why 2checkout informed us regarding the pending chargeback. It had no sense: whatever we replied or not, it didn't work anyway. The Bank i.e. credit card holder, is the boss here.

If you have any ideas how to avoid such deals, we would be pleased to know about them :)

Isn't there some time period after the chargeback can't be done? Anyway this kind of action is unfortunate. I have had to communicate with PayPal's staff for a couple times and they do respond, but not with custom messages but by forwarding some generic email templates with answers to commonly asked questions. Maybe they don't write messages themselves because it would take too much time and this way they encourage people NOT to send them email unless they have something important to say.

I believe there is, and it equals to 6 months.

That's how most of the major merchants work. Sometimes I would prefer to see just couple of sentences of meaningful text, even without an intro 'greeting' and ending 'regards', but this would have more sense than racking through copy-pasted templates to look for a solution :)

Yes, between 6 and 12 months (I think the max is 12 months depending on card type).

They took my $17000 by changing bank info set in their system. Did not send any email notification when my bank info in their system changed.

When I asked, why did I not get notification? Here is their response:

I'm not sure how it all could be related to miniBB, and if it was true, in general... As far as I know, 2checkout does not send a notification email, if the bank info has been changed. They suppose it was the Seller/Owner who's changed this, and they may verify the banking information, calling the bank and verifying Seller's name/surname provided in their profile, with the banking account.

I'm not sure why did you keep so big sum on 2checkout balance. It's obvious you could withdraw much smaller amounts as soon as they reach the smaller limit (of course, except cases when you earn so big money in a month, which I doubt it could be legal afterall). Also, by all facts it shows someone just stolen your 2CO access and did some things instead of you. I bet 2checkout themselves would never do this. They do not need to change banking infos, because money is already on their side.

Lenin has posted same message to other forums related to 2Checkout, so maybe he's just looking for a way to spread the message. If I'd lose that much, the first thing I would do is to contact the police and then a lawyer.

Well, at first, the nickname says a lot :) the second, it's obvious that it's a stone thrown to 2checkout, the same way the same stone could be thrown at anybody via Internet these days. Just for blaming/flaming/trolling and so on.

That's why I didn't remove this message and tried to provide an insider's information on what's possible and what's not; hopefully other people trying to find similar messages, will know that 2checkout could not be guilty on issues like this. Seeing no reply from that person on our forum, proofs again this is kind of flood of a competitor or just a non-satisfied customer coming with the imaginative story.

2Checkout is an international payment gateway and police can not do much. Lawer charges are minimum 10k. We do not have time to recover 17k with lawyer or police.

We exchanged above 30 emails with 2CO and they do not answer to our question and keep avoiding their fault. It's their own staff who did this scam.

If you guys read Nathan's message again, you can clearly understand the real problem.

We have hired an online reputation management company and they are going to run a tool to spread this news in hundreds of sites like minibb, complaintsboard, ripoffreports, trustpilot etc.. Everyday until we get our money back.

Each international WIRE fee is $40. We used to transfer once in a month to our bank.

Its a common practice everywhere in the world to send notification. Any sensitive information change in a 3rd party system requires authentication and notification. It's a law.

Also Nathan of 2CO has agreed that they had system fault. Read this again please the message from 2CO Nathan:
"I told you that the problem was identified and I thought it should have been done. But my tech department is still testing the fix so it has not rolled out yet."

False. I am paid by International Wire too, and they charge only $15.

Please, give a proof to this law's text or something similar.
I doubt you could do that, 'cause there's no such a "law". Each company has its own regulations on it.

I don't deny 2CO system have many faults. Specially, it started to appear after they have introduced the new Admin panel for Sellers. The older one was great and working for years. In the past couple of months, I already was having difficulties with their system, too. In opposite to your case, they have tried to withdraw $55 by wire to me, at the time my withdrawing amount is much bigger (to cover the fees). Luckily I've noticed this in time, and they were forced to cancel it.

But for your case, I see no sense that 2CO would change your banking information to their own, and withdraw the money that way. Except, it could be done by some fired worker, which did that because of anger to his/her employee. THAT would be a serious matter of security inside of the company... obviously, losing constant workers and hiring new workers at some stage will always lead to the problem.

May be your case is also about this, who knows. They will never explore the true nature of things to you anyway, I suppose.

They are still just expectations, I couldn't be sure what's happening in 2CO; hopefully they could be sure on it themselves...

I suppose, spreading just a message may not be enough, if you truly feel guilty on their end. You would need more proofs, screenshots or something, which could make this message more trustful. As I mentioned at the very beginning of our conversation, a false message could be spread by anyone, and if it has no obvious facts, noone will take it seriously; otherwise, flooding Internet with the same message, you may achieve the opposite effect of this money NEVER coming back.

No, Its not False. Refer Wiki link if its false. I could post this link here but minibb does not allow outside links here. So you can Google "Wire Fees".
We have all our accounts with Bank of America and see wiki link to know how much BoA charges for international wire fees.

Nathan Agreed it's 2CO's fault. But ultimately we are struggling and wasting our time to get our money back. Why will we suffer for someone's fault?? Let them give our money back. We will stop bothering and spreading this news in all channels including press meet.

Yes we do have. Like SWIFT copy, Snap shots of our email communication around 10 such files.