Kiesha Dosanjh
One woman’s good deed in a Trader Joe’s parking lot turned into her worst nightmare when she realised a huge mistake.
Arianna Billias, 30, was innocently grocery shopping outside of Boston last fall when she was approached by what she thought was a charity worker with a clip board in the parking lot.
She was asked to give a ‘small donation’ for victims of gun violence, before she was robbed of thousands.
“Of course you should stay vigilant and know who you’re donating to, but to me, they just caught me at the right time,” she told WCVB.
Advert
After agreeing to donate $20 to the ‘cause’ Arianna pulled out her credit card. However, to her shock her card was taken out of her hand because of what was said to be a ‘processing issue’.
Before she knew it, thieves had turned her $20 donation into $5000, which she discovered had gone from her Mastercard balance after opening her Bank of America app.
It was then when the alarm bells started to ring for Arianna.
“Gut feeling, I felt like something was wrong when the card was out of my physical hands,” she told the outlet.
Arianna called the bank straight after she realised the large transaction to an unknown Paypal account, and opened a dispute.
However, six weeks later, the claim was denied.
“It was my word against the scammers in this case, and they did not side with me.”
The fair trade billing act states: “The liability of a cardholder for unauthorized use of a credit card shall not exceed the lesser of $50.”
Mastercard promises zero liability for unauthorized transactions, so long as cardholders “used reasonable care in protecting your card from loss or theft, and promptly reported loss or theft to your financial institution.”
Arianna never authorized the $5000 charge to the account, and there’s no signature saying she did.
However, the Bank of America said: “The chip was read, your PIN was entered, and/or you signed for the merchandise or service.”
She couldn’t find any documentation that the merchant exists as a business - and therefore opened a police report.
The Bank of America have since reopened Arianna’s dispute, and have refunded her the $5000.
UNILAD has contacted Bank of America for comment.
The scam which Arianna found herself a victim of are known as Parking Lot Scams, and are more common than some may think.
It happens when thieves approach unwitting shoppers with a sad story, asking for a charitable donation.