I think that people who are reading this report need to see another thread where many of us have joined from all over the country who have had Sensate Technology illegally steal our credit card numbers and are currently discussing the situation. I hope usacomplaints.com allows this link because it tells the entire story. You won't be wondering around with so many questions anymore as to how Sensate Technology obtained your credit card. The one thing many of us have in common is that we all recently made a purchase to any number of various sites hosted by Free Merchant.com (Digital River). Every one of us tracked it back to a purchase we made to a site that is hosted by Free Merchant aka Digital River (the same company). We have all contacted our banks and had to cancel our current cards and get new ones issued. We have all filed fraud reports with our banks. Digital River has been made aware of the breach in their system and yet this continues (more and more people adding to our thread with new incidents every day). Many of us have contacted the merchants we used, to tell them what happened and very few even realize what's going on because Digital River (Free Merchant) hasn't told them that there is even a problem. They are unwitting participants who just happen to use Free Merchant (Digital River) as their credit card processor and host.
Many of us wanted to just cry we were so relieved when we realized how it happened. It was driving me crazy until I figured it out. If you look at your confirming e-mails from all purchases you might have made online in the past 6 weeks, you will probably find Free Merchant's name at the bottom of that e-mail if you scroll all the way down (it does not say this on the actual merchant's site until you place an order and get the confirming e-mail). You need to look at the confirming e-mail or call that site and ask them who does their online processing. Sure enough when most of us did we all found that we had just made a purchase through a site they host... Every one of us! In fact in my case I had just canceled one card because of this strange charge of $10.65 appearing out of nowhere and hadn't made the connection yet (otherwise I wouldn't have been stupid enough to purchase from the same company again using a different card). While awaiting my new card I had a lot of birthday's coming up so I took out a card that had not been used in years with no activity whatsoever and placed another order from this candy company in Washington state that uses Free Merchant.com as their host and wham! Within days all of a sudden I get another charge on a completely different card with only one purchase made on it in years, from Sensate Technology for $10.65! I finally had an answer and knew what the common denominator was. Most people do so much shopping they can't begin to pin point how it happened. I might have never known had I not placed that second order on a card that had not been used in ages to that same company hosted by Free Merchant again.
Many have made the exact same distinct connection. Sensate Technology is not a real company. They have dummy sites set up that all resemble each other for the purpose of throwing law enforcement off to make it look like there is a reason we were charged these strange fly under the radar amounts of money. They have an unlisted business phone number (big red flag) that comes up in Ventura California. They never answer their phone and only if you keep calling and leaving messages threatening the attorney general do they maybe respond (and not to everyone) and actually refund the money they stole only because you are making such a ruckus that they want you to quietly go away and would rather refund you than get the charge back from their bank.
I spoke to a detective who told me that this is common for them to do. That they figure if the hit you with small amounts most of you won't even notice it on your statement and when you multiply this a thousand times over you get a lot of money! By the time all the charge backs hit they have moved onto a different bank but still have all that credit card information they hacked.
This is a huge scam and it has taken me hours upon hours to figure out on my own. Please whatever you do visit us over here and take the time to read through this thread and listen to all our stories. I hope usacomplaints.com will read this thread as well (there are 10 pages to this as is).
Anonymous
Anytown, California
U.S.A.
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