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How does this scam work?

Asked by downtide (23815points) May 19th, 2011

I work for a company that sells breakdown assistance for cars. I have noticed a trend of fake accounts that are clearly being set up as a scam, but I can’t imagine how anyone can actually benefit from it. Here are the details:

All the accounts are set up on our website, so there is no salesperson collecting commission.
All the accounts are set up for disabled drivers.
All the accounts are using fake or stolen bank details, so payment never gets collected and the accounts lapse shortly afterwards.
They are set up on a variety of addresses, some of which don’t exist at all. Most of the outgoing mail is being returned to us undelivered by the Post Office.
There can be up to 40 accounts to each chosen address
Most of the names look like someone just mashed the keyboard. Stuff like “Mr Adshgdjsh Adsfdfjhdf”
Where there is a telephone number provided, it is usually an unrelated business number, presumably they’ve just taken random phone numbers out of the yellow pages.

These accounts couldn’t ever be used or refunded because they were never paid for, and they’re clearly not ID theft with those randomly-mashed names. What on earth is going on?

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