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Last month, I noticed a $15 charge from an apparently legitimate business that I had never heard of and never done business with. They sell data management software. I can't imagine what they would charge anyone $15 for, and I have no possible use for what they do.

So, I called the credit card company and disputed, and they accepted my dispute and removed the charge. I sent email to the customer support portal of the apparent perpetrator, and received no response.

Unless this is some convoluted misunderstanding involving a legitimate charge routed through an incomprehensible path, there's a crime in here somewhere. Should I leave it to my card issuer to deal with?

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    What makes you think there's a crime? It could just as easily be a typo when someone was transcribing an account number for a payment.
    – Mike Scott
    Aug 8, 2015 at 19:50
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    @MikeScott: That particular explanation is unlikely due to the way credit card numbers work (i.e., checksums).
    – BrenBarn
    Aug 8, 2015 at 19:53
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    @BrenBarn The Luhn algorithm can only reliably detect a single mistake in the credit card number (and only certain kinds of mistakes). If there are multiple typos the error can fail to be detected. Given the number of credit card numbers that get transcribed every day its inevitable that some transcription errors will slip through despite the check digit.
    – Ross Ridge
    Aug 9, 2015 at 3:08
  • The entire point of scamming people for $15 instead of $1500 is that the scammer doesn't need to worry about the police. Of course it's also possible that they somehow process a service for a completely different business and it's indeed legitimate. I've met both of these situations before.
    – Peter
    Oct 19, 2015 at 22:22

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Yes. For $15 it's not worth anyone's time to dig deep just for this specific occurrence.

What you should do, however, is keep an eye on your credit card bills and accounts and watch for any other suspicious activity. It is possible that your number was stolen somehow and someone is using it fraudulently, so you want to be on the lookout in case they try to use it again. However, your credit card company is going to be much, much better than you at detecting patterns of fraud, which is why you should leave it to them unless and until you actually see more suspicious activity.

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