Credit Card Fraud

Fellow Artists, June 27, 2008

I know that you are all aware by now of the recent issues many of us have had with fraudulent credit card charges. A team of artists became aware of this and wanted to get the word out to the bear community. We have been looking into this matter for only a few days, yet have heard from over 50 bear artists who have been victimized. As word continues to spread, we are still hearing from additional people.

Here is what we’ve found in common:
- Charges started appearing around the last week of May and are still appearing.
- It is a worldwide problem – artists from US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand are victims.
- Common charges are seen to Google AdWords, Apple iTunes & Skype, along with florists, candy stores and Microsoft products.
- Amounts of those charges ranged from as little as $1 into the thousands of dollars. While the majority of charges were not large, and many had at least one very small charge used to "test" their card, some artists had multiple charges that added up to totals of $3,000, $6,000 and even $10,000.

Searching for that one common bear business link has not been easy. In a perfect world, we might have found a case of "100% of the affected cards had been on file with company x". Yet as we reviewed our information, we determined that this was not the case.

So what’s been done?
- Edinburgh and Intercal were immediately contacted. The have run extensive internal security checks. We want to stress that both companies were quick to respond and have been very helpful! NEITHER company had dealt with all of the affected artists, and their security systems HAVE NOT been breached.
- US magazines have been contacted and they are assisting us in reaching artists.
- Promoters that have international artists attending have also been contacted and are working with us to spread the word.
- Everyone asked have checked and double checked their security systems and had no troubles reported.

Those of us who have been looking into this have spent many long hours and several sleepless nights trying to do the right thing, and spent far too much time away from our own work in these few short days. None of us are security experts or master sleuths and we feel that at this time, we have done as much as we can and accomplished what we set out to do.

There are no easy answers here as to how this all got started, and if further investigation is to be done, it needs to be done by professionals. We feel that we have documented a trend in our industry, and have made as many others aware of this as we possibly could within a short span of time. More than one artist had not noticed the fraudulent charges sitting on their credit card until they received an email warning them to check on it. We would like to extend our thanks to each and every one of you who helped spread the word in a calm and impartial manner, which has been so very important in an emotionally charged situation like this.

We are proud to say that everyone in this industry, individuals and companies alike, have shown that they can work together; and all of us wish to move forward as a united front. To the suppliers, magazines, show promoters and everyone else in this industry that was contacted, everyone wanted to help, and we all thank you so much for that. To Intercal, who allowed us to report our important initial findings on their Teddy Talk message board, even when things threatened to spiral out of control once or twice.

Above all, we must never forget that the criminals in this story are those who stole our credit card information. The victims are many and span the globe. Each one of us has been a victim, from those who experienced fraud firsthand to everyone else who feared that they would be next. The companies in this industry have been victims, too. Let’s never forget it and continue to support them all as you have done before! Those of us who examined all of this information have no plans to change our buying habits, and hope that you will all join us.

The research team…
Karen Alderson, Aleta Breese, Chrissi Catherwood, Cindy Malchoff and Kelly Zimmerman

-- Addendum 6/30/08 --
We wrote this out a few days ago, and had sent it to several companies to see if they had anything they wanted to add. With the weekend, it was today before we got final approval from everyone. The number as of today is over 60 artists. All we can do at this time is continue to spread the word for people to keep an eye on their credit cards. There are no simple answers here, and the best people to figure out the HOW, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE and WHY answers of these cases are the fraud departments in each of your banks and credit card companies.

In conclusion, we felt that this would be a good time to discuss secure credit card practices. We’ve learned some new things about credit card security this week, and think you will, too. This will be sent as a separate document.