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Report: #1177417

Complaint Review: CRI Online Sales S.A. - Nationwide

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  • Reported By: Patricia — Nitro West Virginia
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  • CRI Online Sales S.A. Nationwide USA

CRI Online Sales S.A. aka customer support, customer support corporation, or customer support corporate Fraudulent Withdrawal of $49.95 Using Stolen PII and Bank Card Numbers Unknown Unknown

*Consumer Comment: Thank you to the Ex-employee :)

*Author of original report: Thank You CRI Ex-Employee!

*UPDATE EX-employee responds: CRI Online Ex employee testimony

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I am filing this report to warn the public about a nationwide scam/crime, summarized as follows:

Perpetrators, posing as a legitimate USA-based 3rd party “Customer Service” call center, are targeting customers of BB&T, JP Morgan Chase, City National, Wells Fargo, Fidelity, CapitalOne (and possibly other financial institutions).

They are using stolen PII (names, addresses, and VISA, MasterCard and bank debit card numbers)—to post an unauthorized charge of $49.95, allegedly for “online ordered” health and weight-loss supplements like Raspberry Ketone Strength, Slimdown, etc.

The $49.95 charge appears on bank customers’ statements as a 10-digit toll-free phone number.com.  The most prevalent origin of the phone number is Florida, but the Customer Service center is actually located in Central America.

I was victimized on August 8, 2014 and again on August 30, 2014.  The first time, my BB&T VISA check card was “hit;” then my CapitalOne MasterCard was hit.

On September 16, 2014 at 9:08 p.m., via an online scam alert website (address listed below), an alleged former agent/employee of the fraudulent call center, posted the following about this scam:

1) That 100+ Central America-based call center agents are taking calls from all over the USA;

2) That these agents knowingly lie to people who call to dispute the fraudulent charge.  Agents are instructed to verify the caller’s name, address and card number and state that the person placed an online order for the product;

3) That the agents are instructed to grant chargebacks (refunds) only to irate callers who threaten legal action/prosecution;

4) That the agents deliberately lie about being located in Miami, Fla, when in fact they are physically located in San Jose, Costa Rica, Central America;

5) That the owners of the call center are Americans located in the USA and the name of their company is CRI Online Sales S.A;

6) That the call center agents and supervisors do not know how the owners obtained stolen PII and credit card numbers;

7) In his post, the alleged former employee of the call center encourages victims to report this scam/crime to the FBI, CNN, FOX News, CBS, and The Judicial Investigation Department, the institution in charge in Costa Rica (similar to the FBI) at http://www.poder-judicial.go.cr/.  

To read the comments of other victims, click on the following link:  http://www.illiteratewithdrawal.com/2014/08/raspberry-ketone-strength-scam/#comments:  

To apply pressure to the perpetrators and to warn potential victims, I have filed a fraud complaint with the following agencies: 1) The Federal Bureau of Investigation; 2) The Internet Crime Complaint Center; 3) My State Attorney General’s office; 4) My State Better Business Bureau; 5) The Florida State Attorney General’s office; 6) The Florida Better Business Bureau (two different offices), and 7) Local and National television networks. 

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 09/17/2014 11:41 AM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/cri-online-sales-sa/nationwide/cri-online-sales-sa-aka-customer-support-customer-support-corporation-or-customer-sup-1177417. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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REBUTTALS & REPLIES:
1Author
2Consumer
0Employee/Owner

#3 Consumer Comment

Thank you to the Ex-employee :)

AUTHOR: angrychick - ()

POSTED: Sunday, October 05, 2014

Thank you for having the courage and decency to share the truth about this scam.Your uprightness is a great quality that I truly respect. We need more honest people like you in the world. Blessings to you.

I got a fraudulent charge on my credit card from this place and I am so glad to know all about where it is coming from. I would just like to know how they got my credit card number in the first place.

Im guessing we need to stop it at the source. If credit card numbers are in the black market that needs to be thoroughly investigated, and quick, before someone else get scammed and has to go through all these issues too

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#2 Author of original report

Thank You CRI Ex-Employee!

AUTHOR: Patricia - ()

POSTED: Thursday, September 25, 2014

I want to thank you for your courage, honesty, and forthrightness in sharing what you know about this scam!  You are not the only ex-employee that has come forth to blow the whistle.  Every clue you have provided is relevant and important to solving this crime and putting the perpetrators out of business.  Thanks again!

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#1 UPDATE EX-employee responds

CRI Online Ex employee testimony

AUTHOR: Sapo1990 - ()

POSTED: Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Im an Ex-employee.

The place is located in San Jose, Paseo Colon, behind The Scotiabank, Maria Luiza Building. The bussiness is being runned in second, third and fourth floor of the building. There are two guards on second floor.

Top manager or "full" manager name: Natasha Picado.

HR manager name: Eloisa Angulo

Another manager: Ericka.

These 3 woman run the place, those are the only  3 managers of the place. IT guy name si Josué, known as "Chombo" (he is kinda of important). A few supervisors name are Melvin, Eduardo and Manuel (Manuel is Nicaraguan)

Its a call center that has been "growing" recently, hiring like 200 employees in the last month. But the place got over staffed and now they are fireing people at the same rate they were hiring, all in a month.

From 1st day training they explain that "bosses" buys this lists of customers in black market if im not wrong, from Amazon or other companys (that what she said). So they just charge their cards with $49.95 for a dietary supplement, making cust think someone else did it or got her card hacked, but it lets you lie trough the call  (as employee) since the company provide you with billing address, customer's name and card number, so you can keep with the lie on the phone since you have sensitive card information.

They call those ones as fake accounts. And there are actual real accounts, from people that fill up the form in the website and purchase the supplement. Because thats how they are running the deal, they actually sell these products, if someone asks for the product ( on a fake account you never get shipped with prod, only thiefed) on a fake account you can ship the product, the bottle of pills (that dont work, for sure, the product dont matter, what matters is the money theft) so it lets them scamming people. Even when the bank calls you, the company tells you, if a bank angent calls do whatever they say, cancel accounts, refund charges. Another importnt detail is that ALWAYS, if a customer requests for refund on a fake account, you give back the money, we can always give it back, since money is being theft, they actually let you givwe back money in case cust gets too angry, so they can keep scamming.

Also if you cancel a subscription, it can get re activated "magically".

You get calls from charges that happens daily, or even 5 minutes ago. From the amount of calls and people working, I calculate that they can scam about AT LEAST 1 million dollar per day. With new charges on cards. You get like 35 calls per day... calculate that between 300 employees going around in a 24h schedules (they place open 24hs, they offer morning, part time, evenening and graveyard schedule)

I dont know where money is going, or wheres deposited. When you are going to issue a refund, you say "let me go check with billing dp". There's no billing Dp, you just place Cx in hold. Also sometimes the refund Fails, you you had to send an email reporting it, but it was kind of weird. you notice how from the 5 charges during this month, it only let you refund 3, and the other 2 wont go, like if it was configured to absolutelly not let you refund some of the money "You cant loose all the money" or " we cant allow you get all your money back"

They use Voice over IP for the phone system, using a software named Kayako. 

For the billing system, they use "CGS", thats the name of the software. and for punching out breaks, you use "My Staff", another software.

You get paid in dollars, paying $4.25 per hour for new employees. They pay you one part (the first $400) in a check or deposited on a bank account, and the remaining money always in cash, dollars.

Once there was "popular story" at work) I was working that day so it was true, about a problem that happend between managers., when Natasha called police because there was a girl that didnt want to leave after she got fired (they didnt want to pay her salary). So police came inside and took the girl away. Then later the HR manager, Eloisa, was screaming to Natasha in her office that "How are you so stupid to call police in here." What I mean or the point of the story is, that just if police shows up there and check some quick information, or make a few questios, the place will be f**ked up. It will be easy to f**k them up, Easy. You could ask few questions to other employees, you will notice clearly what KIND OF BUSSINESS THEY RUNNING THERE.

From my experience there, the real deal is like this...

They charge people like 5 times. one in january, another one in may, and if you dont 'realize' of this charges, then charges you monthly, may, june, july. By the moment you call, maybe you realize about last two charges, and you got thiefed with all the older ones. They provide customer support to an actual company or website that sells dietary supplements, an actually product that can be shipped if needed. but what you do is scam and scam on every call. All cust support is based in Costa Rica, on this call center. all of it. When they ask you where are we located, we are located in Miami Florida, but since we are only "a third party company that provide cust service to these websites", we dont have the money, we dont give you our address because is the website the one have the money, theres no address because you dont need it, we only provide with cust serv, and website dont have address, we dont provide it for "company policy". They let you use any fake name on the phone, even if you want to call yourself "Barack Obama" or , "Hi my name is Iphone Six Reloaded"

I worked there like for 22 days. Apologize for everyone.

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