TULSA — Tulsa Police Department Financial Crime Unit is providing local businesses with information regarding the 'Force Authorization Scam.'
Police said in a Facebook post they have seen an increase in the common scam known as 'Force Authorization Scam.'
A Force Authorization Scam is when a customer's card is declined at a business and the merchant performs a 'force auth' to complete the transaction.
Usually, the merchant would call the cardholder's issuing bank to get an authorization code in order to override the decline.
With a 'force auth,' any combination of entered digits form a 'code' will override the transaction, said police. Therefore, when a customer says, "this happens all the time" and has the merchant enter a combination of digits, instead of calling the cardholder's issuing bank for authorization, the transaction will go through.
Police said the merchant assumes all the risk in these transactions because if the code is fraudulent, the merchant cannot file a dispute. Instead, they will receive chargebacks and fines.
In the past few weeks, police said several local businesses have fallen victim to this tactic.
READ Tulsa police's Facebook post below:
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