#13 by valerie » Tue Jan 03, 2012 12:23
Well let me tell ya a little story and I am sure a lot of people would remember it if I could think of the name.
There was a payment processor that came online some years ago...maybe around 7 years ago.
It was real nice. Very professional. The site was bright greens and whites and was excellent inside and out.
It had a very great layout too.
Inside the member area, you could see those you referred to it, and that was a very cool set up too...you
could mouse over their name and see their country and it was sort of in a big circle type fashion. I mean
that processor had some really truly great features and some I have never seen again.
Millions of people joined it. I couldn't tell you how many people I referred to it but it was a whole lot.
They were very professional. They sent emails on a regular basis.
Then one day they added another option of their users. Members could pay $100 and receive some
additional benefits. I don't remember what those benefits were, I did not pay it.
Time went by. Members kept waiting for the actual send and receive money to be implemented.
It was all there, but not everything was functioning yet in regards to the 'money'.
One day it went POOF! Ok, say they up and ran off. Of course everyone was upset and everyone
was having a jaw dropping experience. I truly could not believe it. If anything was going to go POOF,
it would not have been that. At first everyone thought it was an error, they would be back...of course
they never came back.
Many months passed.
A year passed.
More months passed.
One day, I took a really good look at my bank statement.
Hmmmm I thought, what is this? I looked at some past bank statements....there again, hmmmm
what is this? I was seeing $49.95, $75.00, $120.00, and so on taken out of my bank account by
something with a funny name I could not even pronounce. I called my bank right away and they
told me to come into the bank so that they could research it, etc.
In the mean time, I went online and began to search that funny name. I found loads and loads
and loads of information. Turns out, it was that highly professional payment processor that had
been automatically withdrawing funds from gazillions of bank accounts....from the information we
so gladly handed them!
I never got my money back. I had to close my checking account. I of course reopened a new
checking account but it was all a big headache.
I learned a very good lesson that day, IF you are going to do business online, keep TWO checking
accounts. I have had two checking accounts ever since. I keep one for online biz only and that
is the only one I relay to the payment processors. If something happens, I close it, no big deal,
it does not interrupt my main checking account. I also transfer from that second checking account
on a very regular basis, to my main checking account. So my balance in the second checking
account, is almost always at a $0 balance. As soon as funds hit that second account, I transfer
it out.
With all that said, I think it was known as the 'Mazuma Scam'. I'll have to research it to see as
I don't remember.