Allegheny Co. Small Enterprise Proprietor Caught With Invoice After Credit score Card Fraud – CBS Pittsburgh

MONROEVILLE, PA (KDKA) – Last year’s struggles forced some small business owners to spin and get creative.

For many, that included moving to an ecommerce website and becoming completely dependent on selling online. And as with most things, criminals weren’t far behind.

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KDKA’s Meghan Schiller spoke to a Monroeville man who was the victim of fraud and now says he is stuck with a bill.

Eric Wenning was sitting in front of his computer on Monday and felt amazed.

“There’s a lawsuit, a lawsuit there, a lawsuit there,” he said.

He delves deeper into the companies that process his company’s credit card authorizations after criminals target his website.

(Photo credit: KDKA)

“There were over 34,000 transactions in two minutes that were stopped,” Wenning said.

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Eric’s wife, Heather, showed KDKA the attempted charges, all of which were reported of fraud.

“If all transactions had been completed in two minutes, that would have generated more than half a million in sales. But they are all frauds, all stolen credit cards, ”Wenning said.

He believed his bank’s fraud protection saved the day only to get a bill from outside companies he used to process his credit card authorizations.

“A couple of weeks later, we received this huge $ 20,000 bill for processing these numbers, but nothing was processed. It was a permit like a knock on the door, ”said Eric.

Fees for credit card purchases he said never went through. Now he asks himself: “Who else has to do with it?”

“How many other ma-and-pop stores got fees of about $ 100 or maybe $ 500 or $ 1,000 that they only paid because they didn’t know any better?” Said Eric.

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KDKA has contacted the third-party companies involved, but received no response by the time the message was sent.