Someone from "steamgames.com" stealing £225 from my bank account. [Solved]

[Saiph]

Last Thursday, 15th May, eight transactions were attempted on my debit card totalling £225. All these transactions appear to have come from steamgames.com. Although I was at home and using my PC at the time, these transactions were NOT initiated by me, but they seem to have used my account details held with Steam to take money from my bank account. Despite setting up a ticket on Friday 16th and adding a message to it, Steam have completely failed to reply to my request for an investigation.

My Steam account details are always kept securely, I have never given anyone any information about my account, and no-one else uses the account. There is no way that anyone could have accessed details from my PC as it is secure in my house, and all passwords etc are highly secure.

Has anyone else who uses Steam had any unauthorised transactions go through on their credit/debit card from steamgames.com? Has anyone else had money stolen from their bank account?

I still seem to have full control over my Steam account, and no new games have been added to my library, so it is a mystery where the money has actually gone.

This is causing great inconvenience for me, as my card has now understandably been blocked in case steamgames.com tried to do this again. My bank is helping me to investigate what has happened, but I need information from steamgames.com to find out why transactions have apparently been initiated by them. My only safe option seems to be to destroy my old debit card and obtain a new one, but that will take days. I am considering contacting the British police about this matter.

If anyone has any information that could help, or has suffered losses from their bank, I would like to hear about it.

Thanks for your time.

[UPDATE: It turns out it was some Chinese fraudsters who got hold of my card details via a fake 'shopfront' on the Amazon.co.uk website. I've now cancelled my old card and got a replacement with new details, and all transactions have been refunded. Problem solved.]

[TirithRR]

STEAMGAMES.COM is a legit Steam transaction on your account, so it's not some fake place doing it. I have multiple transactions on my account from "STEAMGAMES.COM" and from "STEAMPOWERED.COM" Five of my last six transactions are "STEAMGAMES.COM' and the other one is "STEAMPOWERED.COM"

Go to https://store.steampowered.com/account/
Click "Store Transactions" and check out what the transactions are listed there.

[Zefar]

http://support.steampowered.com/

The support crew might be able to help you with this. We can't do anything about this issue.

[ KARR™]

Anything showing in your purchase history or trade history to show that your account may have been hijaked but not 'taken over' ?

[Pheace]

Have you looked at your account history at all? Under Account details? See what's been bought?

[Saiph]

I've checked the "Store Transactions" and all other parts of my account, and the only transactions listed there are ones which I did myself. So as I said in my previous post, the money has gone but there's no evidence of WHERE it has gone.

And it's "Steam Support" who I contacted about this, and who so far have not even bothered to reply (except for the standard automated reply rubbish). Doesn't Steam take crime seriously?

[TirithRR]

Sometimes a single purchase may list multiple times to your account in the case of a failed or screwed up transaction. Eventually the duplicates will drop off as they are not collected by Steam. So are all eight transactions for the same amount, and around the same time?

[Saiph]

There were eight transactions within two minutes. The first was for £50, the other seven were for £25. And Steam NEVER charges in rounded figures for its games, so these were not normal games purchases.

[TirithRR]

Originally posted by Saiph:

There were eight transactions within two minutes. The first was for £50, the other seven were for £25. And Steam NEVER charges in rounded figures for its games, so these were not normal games purchases.

Steam Wallet purchases.
http://store.steampowered.com/steamaccount/addfunds

[Pheace]

Originally posted by TirithRR:

Originally posted by Saiph:

There were eight transactions within two minutes. The first was for £50, the other seven were for £25. And Steam NEVER charges in rounded figures for its games, so these were not normal games purchases.

Steam Wallet purchases.
http://store.steampowered.com/steamaccount/addfunds

Given that thought, the OP said he checked Store Transactions. How about the market transactions/game transactions, and your inventory history?

If someone had access, it's not unthinkable they spent that money on items and then traded them off.

[TirithRR]

It's a source of round number transactions. Whether it was his account that purchased it or not is yet to be determined. But his payment method was used by someone on Steam to purchase Steam Wallet Funds.

[Saiph]

Thanks for the pointer TirithRR and Pheace. I've never used the "Community" section of Steam so I'm not familiar with it. It does look possible that the transactions might be connected with my Steam wallet, as there are £50 and £25 buttons available, but I just searched around and checked my inventory history and market history, and that shows no transactions.

[TirithRR]

If the transactions were not on your account, then Steam Support probably isn't going to be able to help you. Since you won't have transaction IDs, etc.

If you are 100% sure the transactions were not done on your account, then you can work with your bank and get the charges taken care of as fraudulent activity.

If the transactions are on your account, then flagging them as fraud at your bank may cause your account to be suspended without Steam doing the work.

[Saiph]

I suppose if someone has used my debit card to fund their own account, and charged it up using the Steam wallet buttons, that could explain the charges. I hope Steam themselves can wake up sometime soon and give me some information, because they should know WHICH account the charges went into. WAKE UP STEAM!

[Pheace]

Originally posted by Saiph:

I suppose if someone has used my debit card to fund their own account, and charged it up using the Steam wallet buttons, that could explain the charges. I hope Steam themselves can wake up sometime soon and give me some information, because they should know WHICH account the charges went into. WAKE UP STEAM!

They're not going to share that information, nor should it be relevant to you. If the charges aren't on your account, then it's extremely likely this has nothing to do with Steam and your CC info was compromised some other way. They wouldn't be able to get your CC info from your account and use it on another one since not all the information necessary is available to someone getting into your account, it's xxxxxxxxx123 (last 3 numbers if I remember right), so they wouldn't have your info. At best they could've used stored info to buy on your account. If that's not the case, then it wasn't done on or through your account, at all.

All you can do then is contact the CC company and tell them they are unauthorized charges.

[Saiph]

Originally posted by Pheace MCT:

They're not going to share that information, nor should it be relevant to you. If the charges aren't on your account, then it's extremely likely this has nothing to do with Steam and your CC info was compromised some other way.
..........

It is relevant to me, in the sense that if Steam could reveal the details, it could give me (or more properly the police) some indication of who is using my card details fraudulently, and those people might then be brought to justice. If Steam withhold the information then they're effectively helping the fraudsters cover up their crime, that's quite clear. Steam may not be guilty of anything, but the least they could do is be helpful.

However, from the other posts in this thread, it does seem possible (or even probable) that the criminals are not directly associated with Steam.

Thanks to all the calm posters in this thread who are helping me get through the feelings of anger and panic caused by this mess!