Part 1: “Free Trial” Scams and The Main Operator Behind Them
Continuity Marketing ı By Jeff Watterson
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Shell Game: A deceptive and evasive action or ploy. For the purposes of this story, Shell Game references the acquisition of a large number of Visa/Mastercard merchant accounts under different people's names for the purpose of spreading transactions across each individual merchant account for the purpose of staying below fraud thresholds on any individual merchant account. That way credit card bureaus are less likely to detect a pattern of fraud to alert authorities and take internal actions to shut down the accounts.
Signers: Signers are individuals that sign their names on merchant accounts at the direction of a UBO to create the illusion that each merchant account is a separate business, as legally they are. In many cases, the signers are completely unaware of the real use of the merchant account they signed up for, and the result is that they often end up with unexpected tax liabilities along with credit issues due to merchant accounts getting terminated due to excessive chargebacks, adding them to the match list.
UBO (ultimate beneficiary): Beneficial owner refers to the natural person(s) who ultimately50 owns or controls a customer51 and/or the natural person on whose behalf a transaction is being conducted. It also includes those persons who exercise ultimate effective control over a legal person or arrangement.
TMF (Terminated Merchant File AKA the MATCH List): MATCH is a system created and managed by MasterCard. It is essentially a database that houses information about businesses (and their owners) whose credit card processing privileges have been terminated for reasons which I’ll discuss later.
It is used by acquiring banks (aka merchant processing banks) to screen potential applicants to see if that applicant has been terminated in the past. Acquiring banks also have the ability to add or remove merchants to or from the MATCH database, given they have justification.
In a nutshell, the MATCH file is like a “blacklist” that banks can cross-check when they take on new business. That way, they won’t get stuck with any bad apples.
Chargeback: the return of funds to a consumer, mainly used in the United States, forcibly initiated by the issuing bank of the instrument used by a consumer to settle a debt. Specifically, it is the reversal of a prior outbound transfer of funds from a consumer's bank account, line of credit, or credit card.
Excessive Chargebacks: if a merchant account receives over 100 chargebacks in a month it can place the signer of the merchant account and the business as a whole on the Visa/Mastercard watch list.
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