Amazon charged American Express card for my last purchase. I do not own an AmEx card.

[mark.1`]

I have been going back and forth with Amazon for about a month.
Someone got into my account and tried to do a $50 refill on some kind of card/certificate. Amazon blocked the transaction as fraudulent and notified me.
I switched my Amazon password and thought everything was fine. That lasted about a week.
I get another email from Amazon, they have blocked the same transaction (card refill of some sort) again.
This time I contact Amazon through Chat.
The agent said that the other thing that could be happening is that the person also had the password to my email account and to get back in they just reset the password and logged into my email and got the reset link that way. I may have been using the same password for both accounts and, of course the email was the same, so it is possible this occurred.
Anyway, Amazon sent me a reset password email and I did it again. This time I used LastPass to generate 2 different 19 character passwords for Amazon and my email. So i should be secure.
A few days after this someone tried to do another card refill.
So I send an email asking if I was still secure or if I had a problem. They said I am fine, no worries.

Finally, the exciting part, I bought an HDMI cable through my account and Amazon used an American Express card to pay for it.
Here is an image from my account:

http://imgur.com/a/EzzxmTl

The image shows that they tried to pay for my HDMI cable with an AmEx card ending in 1004 and it failed, then they charged a backup AmEx card ending in 4007. The payment must have went through because the cable arrived today.

The problem is that I do not own an AmEx card. I checked my credit cards and none of them end in 1004 or 4007. So it isn't just a mistake on the card issuer name.
I did not add this credit card to my account. I don't know who owns the card. But someone, somewhere just bought me an HDMI cable.
Who do I need to report this to so that when the cardholder sees the weird charge and gets justifiably upset I do not get in trouble.
I feel like I need to get in front of this because I think this is fraud and I doubt they will blame this on Amazon.

.....................
Don't the name on the card, the address, the code on the back all have to match up for it to work. How could this happen?

Edit:
I switched images with one that blacks out my name. Sorry for the change.

Another Edit:
Amazon just sent me an email. They reset my password again, deleted my credit card information, etc..
BUT
they did not say a word about the HDMI cable that was purchased using an unknown persons card.
AND I ordered 2 things that day, 1 was an HDMI cable, the second was a 15 dollar Yoga mat. Both items were charged to the card at the same time, one just arrived earlier.
That means I possess 2 items that I did not pay for. Obviously I won't order any other stuff and the information is deleted but Amazon does not seem to care after that.

So I have 2 items I did not pay for. It looks like I am some sort of thief and someone has charges on their card that they do not deserve. If you will pardon the expression "WTF do I do"?

I don't have the full card number so I can't call AmEx and tell them, how would they ever figure out which account holder it was.
I can offer to pay Amazon, but they already got their money. There is just some poor person out there who got screwed.

I am hoping you have some authority I can report this too, so people know I did not do anything. (it feels like there is this potential crime out there that is hanging over my head and will bite me in the rear someday. This is a little facetious, but don't identity protection companies spend up to 1 million dollars tracking down identity thieves.

Meanwhile I sent an email back to Amazon asking if I can pay the person the money for the HDMI cable and Yoga mat.

 

[justalayman]

I don’t know why you wouldn’t have the complete number as it does show up on your amazon page if you check what methods of payment you have registered.


But why did you complete the transaction knowing it was being charged to an Amex card? Even the one click purchase show you the method of payment at the checkout screen.

Have you found any purchases on your amazon account that you didn’t make? You can review your purchase history to check. Of course you can have purchase sent to addresses other than the one registered as yours. If a person purchased items on your account they would likely send them somewhere other than your address.


From what you’ve described, it looks like you are the bad guy here. You need to be very explicit with amazon regarding the situation. When they receive a chargeback from Amex for the fraudulent purchase on whoever’s account your merchandise was charged to, they will want payment from you.

 

[LdiJ]

I don’t know why you wouldn’t have the complete number as it does show up on your amazon page if you check what methods of payment you have registered.


But why did you complete the transaction knowing it was being charged to an Amex card? Even the one click purchase show you the method of payment at the checkout screen.

Have you found any purchases on your amazon account that you didn’t make? You can review your purchase history to check. Of course you can have purchase sent to addresses other than the one registered as yours. If a person purchased items on your account they would likely send them somewhere other than your address.


From what you’ve described, it looks like you are the bad guy here. You need to be very explicit with amazon regarding the situation. When they receive a chargeback from Amex for the fraudulent purchase on whoever’s account your merchandise was charged to, they will want payment from you.

I am not sure that I would notice if my payment method had changed on one click purchasing.

 

[mark.1`]

LdiJ is right. My payment is automated. I just push a button and it charges my card, or in this case, another persons card. I did not know what happened until I saw the receipt with the AmEx symbol on it. Frankly, if I had not have had all the problems with my account I would not have even looked at the email receipt and might not have seen it.

Here is a new problem:
This is a portion of the email they sent to me, saying what they would do.

Thank you for telling us about the unauthorized activity in your account. To protect your information, the credit card details in your account cannot be accessed via our website. We also do not display full credit card numbers in your account.

We have taken these steps to restore your account:
-- Disabled the password to your account.
-- Reverted any modifications made by this party.
-- Canceled any pending orders. You can ignore any confirmation emails you received for these orders. This is because these orders were not charged to any card or gift card that you registered to your account.

Please allow 5 hours for these actions to take effect.

The only thing is that I just logged into my account and guess what, I did not have to change the password or anything. So they did not do any of the things they said. And I waited longer than 5 hours.

On the other hand, I was able to see 4 AmEx cards in my account, all with different names.. What I can see is the last four digits of card, expiration date and cardholder name. (full account number not available to me from the "Edit" mode in my account)

I can only put one smippet up here because the other snippets reveal identitiy and card information.

http://imgur.com/a/Vy8391z

I went to AmEx site, they don't want to chat/email with me unless I am a cardholder. Which, as you know, I am not.
Now what?

And

Thanks for the help

Edit:
I sent an email, with snippets containing the names of the AmEx holders to the Financial Services Fraud people on this website:
https://dfr.oregon.gov/Pages/index.aspx

I gave a 1 sentence intro, cut and pasted my first post on this forum, and offerred to give them the emails between me and Amazon (or anything else they might want to clear this up.
I don't know if these guys are going to care or not.
If you think I should do something else or something more, please tell me. I don't need anybody associating my name with identity theft. As far as I know that is a crime. I don't need that kind of hassle in my life.

THanks again

 

[justalayman]

Ok, I’ll take it on the chin.

I had to go buy something to check this out. Ya’ll are right

Regardless,

I would remove all cards not yours from your amazon payment system.

I would plan on paying for the items purchased (the items you purchased) once charge backs come through (if they do).

Check your purchase records to review whether anything else has been purchased on your account.

 

[mark.1`]

I couldn't figure out what you meant when you said this
"I had to go buy something to check this out. Ya’ll are right"
but you are talking about the automated payment, where you just need to click once and your done.

Since I emailed the fraud people, are you sure I should change it. Is it evidence?

If the fraud guys can tell anyway, then I will delete it. If not, then maybe I should leave it. One thing is certain, I cannot buy anything from Amazon until somebody figures something out. Now that I know, buying anything would make me guilty too. Right. That should be Intent, one element of a crime.

ALSO
Thanks to everyone for looking in on this. This is such BS and I really don't know what to do but I think I have been proactive enough now for any investigator to think that I probably am not a bad guy.

Anyway, are we sure on the delete? Is it ESI someone needs for later. (I studied to be a paralegal but don't work in that field and have been out of school for about 3 years, so I am a little rusty)

I also ran MalwareBytes and an Avast AV program to make sure there is not keylogging or other stuff on my computer happening. Someone mentioned that I should and they were right. Additonally, I saved all the emails and chat transcripts from Amazon that I could find over the past month.

 

[LdiJ]

I couldn't figure out what you meant when you said this
"I had to go buy something to check this out. Ya’ll are right"
but you are talking about the automated payment, where you just need to click once and your done.

Since I emailed the fraud people, are you sure I should change it. Is it evidence?

If the fraud guys can tell anyway, then I will delete it. If not, then maybe I should leave it. One thing is certain, I cannot buy anything from Amazon until somebody figures something out. Now that I know, buying anything would make me guilty too. Right. That should be Intent, one element of a crime.

ALSO
Thanks to everyone for looking in on this. This is such BS and I really don't know what to do but I think I have been proactive enough now for any investigator to think that I probably am not a bad guy.

Anyway, are we sure on the delete? Is it ESI someone needs for later. (I studied to be a paralegal but don't work in that field and have been out of school for about 3 years, so I am a little rusty)

I also ran MalwareBytes and an Avast AV program to make sure there is not keylogging or other stuff on my computer happening. Someone mentioned that I should and they were right. Additonally, I saved all the emails and chat transcripts from Amazon that I could find over the past month.

Here is the thing. Obviously someone put those credit cards on your account. Obviously that person wasn't you. Obviously that person had packages delivered to a different address than you did. Go to your Amazon account, click on "orders" and go see what has been ordered in the last six months and where those orders have been delivered.

You also can still buy products through Amazon...even if you do not delete those cards. Stop using one click purchasing and select your payment method and delivery address each time, selecting only YOUR card and YOUR address.

Or, as others have suggested, delete everything from your account that isn't yours.

 

[mark.1`]

At 6:37 12/25, Amazon sent me another email telling me they locked me out of my account and I can't get back in for 5 hours.

I just logged in and I did not have to reset the password or anything. It is like they are not in control of my account either. They can't seem to lock the account so no one can abuse it.

All the orders that show in my account are mine, addressed to me and delivered to my address. They were also paid for with my credit card.

 

[LdiJ]

At 6:37 12/25, Amazon sent me another email telling me they locked me out of my account and I can't get back in for 5 hours.

I just logged in and I did not have to reset the password or anything. It is like they are not in control of my account either. They can't seem to lock the account so no one can abuse it.

All the orders that show in my account are mine, addressed to me and delivered to my address. They were also paid for with my credit card.

Except the two items that you already mentioned, correct? At this point I would suggest that you delete the Amex cards from your account. You can print out hard copies of the information before you delete it.