I had a merchant account with XXXX XXXX XXXX. They claim that I charged someone 's credit card for {$4900.00} under my merchant account number. I never initiated any such charge. Apparently someone else had XXXX XXXX XXXX change my merchant number to route to their bank account and placed a fraudulent charge to someone 's credit card under my business name. Once the money was deposited to their account, they withdrew the funds and closed the account. 

XXXX XXXX XXXX got notice of a charge back under my company name and tried to recover the funds, but the account was closed. They are now contacting me and are claiming that I need to pay for this charge. 

I let them know that I was completely unaware of this and never charge a single credit card on my merchant account ( I opened this account to allow my customers to make ACH payments to me - they are usually less than $ XXXX/month ). XXXX XXXX XXXX never even notified me that my bank account was changed and I did not authorize a change of my bank account at any time. 

Obviously, the bank account was not opened in my name, as they must be opened in person with photo ID according to the Patriot Act. XXXX XXXX XXXX will not release to me the name of the person whose credit card initiated the charge back and they wo n't give me the name of the bank and account # where the funds were deposited, so I have no way of knowing exactly how this even happened. I can report that I received an ACH deposit the Monday after this alleged credit card charge ( Father 's Day ), so this must have been a very quick change. 

Since I did not initiate the change of this bank account information and did not make this charge, I should not be held accountable for it. I notified XXXX XXXX of this and they acknowledge it was probably fraud, yet they will do absolutely nothing on their end to investigate this fraud. They are only willing to proceed with collections against me, even though I had nothing no ability to control their security practices, which are obviously flawed. 

On my end, I did file a police report of this fraud and a fraud report with the Federal Trade Commission. I continued to receive calls from XXXX XXXX XXXX demanding payment along with threats that they were going to send me to collections. I kept denying I made this charge, yet they still proceeded with collections. I just received my first collections notice from Consolidated Recovery Group, LLC and I responded that I am disputing this charge.