HENRICO COUNTY, Va. -- Fraudulent Amazon charges are showing up on bank statements of Wells Fargo Bank customers throughout Virginia.
A Wells Fargo Bank spokesperson confirmed Thursday their fraud investigators are working to find the source of the charges.
“This is not a breach of Wells Fargo accounts or systems – the fraudsters do not have personally identifiable customer account information and have not gained access to customer accounts,” Wells Fargo spokesperson Kristy Marshall said. “This fraud is specific to unauthorized debit card transactions."
VCU student Olivia Edgell was one of the numerous Virginians who found her debit account had been compromised.
"The first charge I noticed on my banking statement was $14.03," Edgell said. "Unless sleep texting is a new thing I don’t think I made any purchases on Amazon."
Olivia Edgell
Edgell noticed weeks later several more charges from Amazon had shown on her account.
"The second charge was $14.16, which isn’t a lot of money. But, it’s still my money and I didn’t use it," she explained.
The 19-year-old found that her solution to stop the fraudulent charges was to receive a new debit card and number through Wells Fargo.
Edgell was told the scammers were opening 30-day Amazon Prime trial accounts in different names under the account numbers. The accounts were charged when the 30-day trial had lapsed.
David Johnson from Midlothian found that the scammers opened 18 different Amazon accounts with his card number. He was notified when Wells Fargo's fraud office called him.
"Whoever is doing it - you’ll be prosecuted," Johnson warned. "I'm not going to stop."
"As we identify fraudulent transactions, we take quick action to stop the activity and prevent it from happening again, and we are fully reimbursing our customers for fraudulent transactions," Marshall stated.
David Johnson
Marshall would not disclose the number of Virginia customers impacted by the fraud.
“We are working directly with customers in the state of Virginia who were victims of a recent fraud issue that affected some customers in the state,” she said. “We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and challenge of dealing with this experience. ”
She said the bank has taken action to prevent “this particular fraud” from occurring again.
For security reasons, she would not disclose those new security measures.
Customers with concerns were asked to call Wells Fargo’s 24-hour Phone Bank at 1-800-TO-WELLS (small business customers: 1-800-CALL-WELLS).
