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SALT LAKE CITY — Talk about messing with the wrong guy. Someone tried to rip off the son of KSL consumer protection reporter Bill Gephardt.
Phil Gephardt owns a mixed martial arts and cross-fit gym Factum Gym in Sandy, Utah. Apparently someone tried to rip him off with a text message.
"She was asking how much it would cost to send her three kids to my gym for three straight months, and I responded with our price,” Gephardt said.
Gephardt and the texter started exchanging messages. She claimed she was in a hospital in California, was deaf and could only communicate through text messages.
She said she would pay with her Discover credit card. And guess what? The credit card checked out: it was good. The charges for the three memberships would go through.
But there was one more thing. The texter said she had a nanny who would deliver the children and she needed to pay the nanny here in Utah. So, would he charge an additional $4,000 on the Discover card to help her out since she was stuck in the hospital and then send the money to the nanny?
"They were going to run it for the price we had plus they were going to give us a tip of about $300,” Gephardt said. "Yeah, a tip for helping her out with paying her nanny off."
And, again, the Discover card with the number, expiration dates, ZIP code, and even the CVV code all were good.
"As far as we know, it was a good credit card number," Gephardt said.
But he wasn't fooled and began investigating.
"I went to Chase Bank, spoke to the manager at a local Chase Bank, and they helped me out greatly and said they would look into it and would freeze the account immediately," he said.
He also called Discover's fraud department and reported the credit card.
"Like, the card would have ran, but it would have come up as a fraudulent card later, I would assume,” he said. “And then three days later the bank would say, ‘Oh, that's a fraudulent card.’ And now I'm on the hook for $4,000."
It turns out the ZIP code wasn’t from California but from Arkansas, and the credit card was good because it was recently stolen and no one reported it by the time the scammer began contacting the business.
"Usually, if they say we can't do any kind of talking on the phone, I'm in a hospital, I'm out of state, but I'd still like to pay — red flags all over that,” he said.
