Recourse with Credit Card company after victimized by fraud?
"Concealing parts of a document in order to obtain a signature is illegal. The company committed signature forgery because they effectively modified the document after you signed it (i.e. unfolded the parts that were previously folded). I suggest that you go to your local police department to file a report, citing ""signature forgery"". Once you have the police report, call your bank's fraud department (not the general billing dispute line) and cite the police report right away, specifically calling out ""signature forgery"". I would be surprised if you don't get a favorable outcome." If the business is being investigated by your state's Attorney General's office, then your first call should be to that office.  They will be able to help you in a few ways, even if they can't explicitly resolve the situation, and they also would undoubtedly appreciate your information to add to their case as well. First, they may be able to tell you how other victims have had their cases resolved, particularly if any went to court on their own.  While they won't be able to provide you with personal information of the other victims unless it is public knowledge (via a court case), the information about how the other victims resolved the cases may be helpful - both to show what to do, and what not to do. Second, they may be able to put you in contact with an attorney who is handling other cases like yours. That may reduce the cost of the attorney (as they'll have already done some of the work), and may mean that the attorney is willing to work with no up front fee on the assumption of winning the case. Third, if there are options for getting your money back without a court case, the AG's office may be able to help provide those as well. If the Attorney General's office is unable to help you, then your best bet is to contact an attorney on your own - look for one who specializes in consumer protection and fraud.  This is the purpose attorneys exist for: pursuing your interests against another's.  Let them do their job.  Do make an effort to find a good, honest attorney; you may find some help on how to do this on law.se if you need it (not actual recommendations, mind you, just help with how you would go about finding one).  It sounds like your claim would be above and beyond the level of a small claims court lawsuit, but verify this in your jurisdiction; if small claims court goes up to $10,000, you may be able to pursue it there on your own - but I would still get some help from an attorney, at least finding out what you would need to win. "I agree that you shouldn't give up trying to get your money back, but I strongly feel that this is not sufficient. If they are trying to victimize you, they are trying to victimize others.  Taking care of getting your own money back should be your top concern, but contacting any Attorneys General and District Attorneys that have jurisdiction should also be a priority to help others--past, present, and future--that might be caught in this scam. Contact them, contact the police, contact the BBB, contact the local media. Shine a light and make the cockroaches pack up and get out of town. ""We got you... you have no recourse"" should always be met with the response, ""I will shut you down."""
&gt; Try it! Deposit a check or buy with a credit card and scribble something unrelated as a signature! The deposit or credit card transaction will go through.  About that you are correct, however during any sort of forensic investigation they are going to ask to see a signature receipt if one is available.  &gt; For decades, retailers never compared signatures on credit cards to the person's signature.  No that isn't true. Retailers are required by many card processing vendors to send in a signed receipt. This is changing, because employees are lazy, and retailers don't care about their customers at all so they don't bother enforcing any standards on their minimum wage register jockeys. However many of them are still required to send signed receipts in. When I was younger I worked at a store that would not get paid by the bank if it did not send in a signed receipt for every transaction.  Go on, try walking away without signing your credit card receipt at stores where they present it for signature, and see what happens.  &gt; I know what I am talking about because I deal with credit cards a lot, professionally, in IT.  You and everyone else. Big deal. Different credit card processors have different requirements for their customers (merchants).  &gt; The credit card companies don't really care.  I think the real lesson here is **nobody cares**. Not the banks, not the credit card companies, and not the merchants. The only thing any of them give a fuck about is keeping the money flowing, especially into their own wallets, and if that means customers get ripped off sometimes because of inadequate protections, so what.  My only point is, if I have one at all, **merchants _should_ care** about protecting the customer, and **customers _should_ care** about what protections are in place to prevent fraud. **PIN numbers are fine** as an authentication method, **but they should be completely shielded from view** by people standing in line or cameras overhead. "The best way I know of to get the interest rate lowered is to call the credit card company and simply ask. Typically if a credit card company thinks you will leave them for another company they will be willing to work with you.  There is also the option of transfering some of the higher interest debt to one of the lower interest credit cards. It sounds like you have your friend on the right track by focusing all extra money on the credit card with the highest interest rate. Then after that one is paid off send all extra to the next highest one and so on.  The classic ""snowball"" effect." "You have no recourse on the spot to do anything to the vendor other than pay the fee, pay cash, or walk away.  If you're on a mission with longer-term horizon than immediate satisfaction, your options will vary by state.  If you're in a state where the fees are legal and the owner is (potentially) violating an agreement with the card company, you can report the vendor to the card company.  They may or may not really care.  If you're in a state where the fee is actually illegal, you'd need to see what options you have with the local authorities. You should keep in mind that if the vendor is violating an agreement that's between the vendor and the card company only, you have absolutely no rights to enforce that agreement.  You only have legal rights if you're a party to the agreement in question or if the law gives you some special rights specific to given circumstances. (The lawyers call this having ""standing."")  Likewise if the vendor is doing something that's not consistent with the agreement between you and the card company, you also have no claim against the vendor (because the vendor is not party to your agreement with the card company), although you might have a claim against the card company." TL;DR.: Because eventually the CC issuer will pass the fraud bill to the customer, in the form of increased fees and/or taxes. Even with no liability in the case of fraud, the customer should put effort into security measures with their card. The expense from fraud may be the sole burden of the credit issuer / bank as per Ben Miller's answer, but this expense will someday find its way into the customer's pockets: Disclosure, i work at a bank. A banks' best ability probably is risk management. The ones that were bad at this probably went under in the last four decades. With regulations such as SOx, Basilea, and others, it is impossible for a bank to neglect risk management. Every expense, including operational losses, a bank incurs will reflect in increased fees / interest rates for the customers. So in the case of a sharp raise of credit card fraud, the banks will soon take measures to reduce these losses. That may mean canceling the cards of high-risk groups of customers, increasing fees or interest. A particular customer that is often the target of fraud (way more than the average for that customer's demographic) will probably see his card not renewed or even cancelled, or his limits decreased and/or rates/fees going up. "Executive summary: It sounds like the merchant just did an authorization then cancelled that authorization when you cancelled the order, so there was never an actual charge so you'll never see an actual refund and there's no money to ""claim"". More detail: From your second paragraph, it sounds like they just did an authorization but never posted the transaction. A credit card authorization is basically the merchant asking your credit card company ""Does sandi have enough credit to pay this amount and if so please reserve that amount for a bit."" The authorization will decrease the total credit you have available on the card, but it's not actually a charge, so if your billing cycle ends, it won't show up on your statement. Depending on which company issued your credit card, you may be able to see the authorization online, usually labelled something like ""Pending transactions"". Even if your credit card company doesn't show pending transactions, you'll see a decrease in your available credit, however you shouldn't see an increase in your balance. The next step, and the only way the original merchant gets paid, is for the merchant to actually post a transaction to your card. Then it becomes a real charge that will show up on your next credit card statement and you'll be expected to pay it (unless you dispute the charge, but that's a different issue). If the charge is for the same amount as the authorization, the authorization will go away (it's now been converted to an actual charge). If the amounts are different, or the merchant never posts a transaction, the authorization will be removed by your credit card company automatically after a certain amount of time. So it sounds like you placed the order, the merchant did an authorization to make sure you could pay for it and to reserve the money, but then you cancelled the order before the merchant could post the transaction, so you were never really charged for it. The merchant then cancelled the authorization (going by the start of your third paragraph). So there was never an actual transaction posted, you were never charged, and you never really owed any money. Your available credit went down for a bit, but now should be restored to what it was before you placed the order. You'll never see an actual refund reflected on your credit card statement because there was no actual transaction." That all makes sense, but all of those things are the responsibility of the cardholder.  If you want to pay off your balance, anything quoted would obviously not include any transaction yet to post.  The problem is a creditor refusing to give the balance AND refusing to take a payment for an amount over the previous statement balance. This is essentially forcing the customer to pay more interest after they declare their intent to pay the full amount.  Good points, but I don't believe those were factors in this case. "You should hire a lawyer. The fact that they told you your personal information shows that they actually had it, and are not imposters, which is a good thing. The fact that they mislead you means that their intentions are not pure (which is not surprising coming from a collection agency of course). When dealing with collections (or any matter of significance for that matter), don't rely on their recording of the call, because they can always conveniently lose it. Make sure to write down every single detail discussed, including the date and time of the call, and the ID/name of the person on the other side. If possible - make your own recording (notifying them of it of course). It's too late to record the calls now, but do try to reconstruct as much information as possible to provide to your lawyer to deal with it. In the end of the day they will either provide you with the recording (and then you might be surprised to hear that what they said was not in fact what you thought they said, and it was just your wishful thinking, it is very possible to be indeed the case), or claim ""we lost it"" and then it will be a problem to either of you to prove who said what, but they'll have the better hand (having better lawyers) in convincing the court that you're the one trying to avoid paying your debts. That is why proper representation at all stages is important. As to the bankruptcy - it won't help for student loans, student loans is one of the very few types of debts you can't really run away from. You have to solve this, the sooner the better. Get a professional advice. For the future (and for the other readers) - you should have gotten the professional advice before defaulting on these loans, and certainly after the first call." I'm guessing you're in the US? If so, yes, you can be prosecuted, but it's unlikely.  Fraud crimes are up to a prosecutor to pursue, there are a lot of fraud cases and bystanders take low priority, I'm assuming you're passively complicit, not actively.  If this is the case it's best to work with the bank to get your situation cleaned up and move on.  These days, most banks have dealt with wire fraud at least once, and they're familiar with cashiers check fraud.   A fair warning, the bank will report you, if they think you're involved, so if you are not a complete bystander, you may want to lawyer up.  So hopefully you didn't try to spend any of the fraudulent money and hopefully you have proof of a third party, because they will want a connection to that person (name/number/other) to file their report.