That Time Someone Tried to Buy a Motorcycle With My Credit Card

Yall get a snack. It’s story time. This all started on Wednesday while I was at work. I got this alert on my phone:

So someone was trying to use my credit card to spend $9,000.00. Well, I caught the alert in time to cancel the transaction (notice it says if I/they try again, it will approve).

Welp. I’m nosy and into drama and like the “tea” as K2 would say. So I look up where my card is being used. I call up Battle Creek Powersports. I ask if anyone is there who just had a card declined for that amount. Yep. Are they still there? Yep. Well, that’s not their credit card. Que calling of the cops.

NOTE: Over the last few days, I’ve collected more info so I will be filling in some events that happened that I only just found out about today. So if you didn’t hear this in the original story, that’s why.

So the manager put the phone down on the desk to call the cops. I can still hear everything in the background. So after my card was declined, he used another. He was reading the numbers out to the cashier because their internet was down. She was using her cellphone to run the transaction. So she never saw the cards to find this suspicious. Also, apparently they were in his cellphone wallet, so wouldn’t have looked suspicious anyway. That card went through. So he loaded up his new dirt bike in a Uhaul van. The only reason he was still there, was that he was pushing his luck. He and his accomplice were discussing the purchase of another bike. However, now the store was up to their conniving. They were distracting them until the police could get there. But the guys got suspicious and fled with their new stolen bike.

I heard all this going on through the phone. She came back and I was like — did they just steal a bike from you? Yep. But they had someone hop on a bike and chase after them and we were hopeful that between that and the police already in route, this would be caught and dealt with. How exciting — I just triggered a police chase! What an interesting day at work! Yeah, they didn’t catch them.

The manger has been super nice to deal with. She’s just so thankful that I called them. Apparently, it would be a few days before they would ever find out it was fraud. By then everything would be long gone and no one gets arrested. Also, dirt bikes don’t require registration. So it’s a nifty high price item to steal. I asked her why they wouldn’t be suspicious of someone chunking a whole ass motorcycle on a credit card. She said that people do it to get the credit card benefits or miles and then pay it off. That’s fair. She sent me his license to see if I recognized it, I do not:

I get a call from the cops the next day. They did not catch the thieves. He was excited that I had a 256 area code though because the guy used a Huntsville address. Did I recognize it? Yeah. That’s MY address. He said this happens in nice neighborhoods all the time. People steal cards out of the mailboxes. Well, I don’t live in a neighborho… Oh damn, we do look rich as fuck by our house though. I was just shocked that they knew my card could AFFORD a motorcycle. I looked through my records and there were no “test” charges. How did they know my address and info and that I had such a high limit?

I have since talked to the bank and a new card was not mailed out. So they got my info some other way. Not a simple mailbox thief. And of course the license and everything is fake so they have no leads.

Then Friday I get this:

So they got caught doing the scam again at Polaris. Well, the driver got caught. Mr “Nolan Adams” fled on foot. I thought that was the end. What a wild thing to happen. Police chases and fraud and I’m all up in it! Then today, I get a letter in the mail for Mr Nolan Adams congratulating him on his new Kawasaki purchase. It includes the model and stuff so I google it. Looks like he got one of these:

Nice ride, bro. Another $10k bike. So I texted the manager and she called me. We’re both kinda not involved anymore but highly invested in this motherfucker getting caught. She fills in a lot of gaps. And sends me this news article and picture of the guy from the Polaris dealership — same guy as the license picture.

So are these guys just going around with a bunch of spoofed credit cards buying dirt bikes? It would seem so. They don’t even think it’s a real Uhaul van. She said that as soon as I called her and informed them of the scam, they informed all the other dealerships. One of them, Chase Motorsports, had actually turned the guys away because he was suspicious and told them they couldn’t buy it on a credit card.

So Polaris had heard about these guys through the grape vine of dealerships and called the cops. Who then arrested the driver, but Mr Adams ran. And get this, there was a brand new Yamaha in the van. Yamaha didn’t even know they got scammed. I doubt Kawasaki knows either.

So the manager tells me that this week she got a call from the guy whose credit card did work at their business freaking out about the transaction. He lives only like 40 minutes from me. And the dealership is an hour and half from here. And the driver is about 40 minutes away. So it seems a bit local to me… She’s going to give the other guy my info and see if we can compare notes to see if we’ve used our cards at the same place at some point. Tomorrow I’m going to call the police and offer to send them my shiny new Kawasaki owner info. I guess I’m going to start getting a lot of dirt bike mail now…

So we know this jackass has fraudulently purchased, at minimum, three shiny new dirt bikes. We’re going to keep each other in the loop and try to do some tracking for the police. Apparently, if I hadn’t have called them on a whim — none of this would have come to light until THIS week when the other guy called to see what the hell he was charged for! Even then, they wouldn’t have been able to track all the purchases back to the same guys and Polaris wouldn’t have stopped them either. Because no one would have know there was anyone doing this — they’d have all been isolated incidents. We can only tie Battlecreek, Chase Motorsports, and Polaris because of my call. Yamaha was just in the van when they were arrested, and I’m holding the Kawasaki info.

What the fuck? Credit card companies have no incentive to fix this. They only care about protecting themselves and then card holders. Not catching thieves. So this manager I called, has to pay back the money to Visa for the fraudulent charge. They just have to eat it. Visa doesn’t care.

I care though. Can’t wait to talk to my fellow stolen card brother! Does he use the same gas stations? Or eat at Another Broken Egg a lot? I wonder if there is somewhere we can pinpoint where we both used our cards…