[updated - CARDILLY is FRAUD and NOT a legitimate business - Gift Cards NOT Received, Cardilly Security Certificate has been REVOKED.
DO NOT USE Cardilly. GeoTrust has revoked their certificate. Cardilly is a scam.
These clowns went under the name of “SG Marketing” operating via a bank probably in Etobicoke, Canada. Note that there appear to be some places named “SG Marketing” that are legitimate as well as the fraudulent Cardillians.
In December 2011 I’m informed by Citi Cards that they have permanently credited me back the $100. I’ve sinced cancelled this card as well.
[well, it's been about two weeks since they reported my order "shipped" and it's not here, so I'm reporting Cardilly to the fraud department of my credit card company].
Still pretty confused about how blatant they have been with this approach, and not clear how they expect to make money, but certainly this is not a quality business and it’s probably a scam.
Yes, something seems very VERY fishy about Cardilly, but it also seems odd that scammers would be so persistent in the face of so much negative buzz. How are they doing to avoid the fraud departments of all the credit card companies of the people they are scamming? My tentative guess at this time is that this is a somewhat questionable ”gray hat” business, perhaps testing out something to see how it flies. At worst I’m guessing they are sending out stolen or hacked discount cards.
I have yet to see somebody report they received their cards – definitely a red flag – but Cardilly has only been in biz for a month or so. They seem to be using a Groupon style model which *might* explain the great deals. Since they limit the number of cards per day it
As I noted in the earlier post Cardilly is either a scam or a very odd way to get huge, but negative, buzz for a new business. Although many online are stating this is a scam, it appears to be a fairly profitless one since all these online charges are via Credit Cards and they’ll all honor chargeback rules.
I called Capitol One who advised me to wait to file any fraud actions until I fail to receive the promised cards – then they said they’d happily refund my money and initiate a fraud action.
I’ve inquired about my order status (I “bought” two $100 Wal Mart gift cards for $50 each last week). Cardilly replied:
—————-
Hello,
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Subject: Re: Order status please
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Why would the cards be stolen or hacked?
They are legitimately purchased in Pompano Beach, Florida and FedExed to Canada in bulk where they are re-mailed in Canada so that there has been nothing ever deposited in the US mails.
Do you really consider this some sort of “business model”? The only “business model” that comes to mind is fraud and trying to keep the postal inspectors at bay.
You start doing this stuff and fulfilling the first few orders and new orders start rolling in …. ever hear of a guy named Ponzi? Or in view of the people who are falling for this nonsense, ever hear of a guy named Patsy?
Victims of these thieves should go to Insider Pages for Sarasota, FL, to leave a review on Cardilly.com. I hope the website is flooded with accurate reviews of the true nature of these scammers.
Sarasota?? You think they are located in Sarasota? You think they ever were located in Sarasota? They appear to be more likely located near Pompano Beach, FL. And what would all this posting by victims gain anyone?
I have no idea where they are actually located, but since they claim to be located in Sarasota this is where folks will look for info about the company. Thus, the importance of informing the public about their true fraudulent nature. I almost regurgitated when I read the glowing review on Insider Pages, one which I am certain was posted by a ringer since no one else has had a positive experience with these crooks.
Foolsgold I agree this is very odd, but how will they make any money? All Credit cards (which is what I think everybody is using to buy these) guarantee refunds on this type of transaction, and I think they can all chargeback to the card collection folks who should be easy to ID
. In a case like this they should all be planning to go to jail as the size of the fraud will be substantial with all the sales.
My card company said they’d happily refund my money if the cards don’t arrive and recommended I just wait (they also seemed to indicate they had no reports about Cardilly though I don’t think that says much). However it would seem that the card fraud departments would be all over these guys by now thanks to the many chargebacks people appear to have done.
Quite frankly, I have no idea how the money will be extracted out of the cycle that you suggest. Perhaps many victims will write it off in anger and not contact the card company or notice the charge? Perhaps many victims will use the card for a low value item and lose the use of the balance?
All I know is that once you have these shenanigans going on, something is rotten in Denmark and if you don’t know the exact nature and degree of it, that doesn’t mean things are not rotten.
The cards are physically purchased in Florida but shipped (not mailed) to Canada where they are deposited in the Canadian, not US, mails by a separate entity located at what I belief to be an address used by telemarketers. Perhaps the fraudsters are relying on some quirk in Canadian laws or US laws? Perhaps the Canadian court will hold that the chargebacks are invalid under Canadian law because it is a different entity or something. I have no idea.
All I can say is that it is so absurd to think of this as a legitimate way of doing business. Buy a product in Florida, ship it to Canada, then mail it from Canada at half the price you paid for it in Florida.
Would love to hear if any one person has recieved their cards yet. I wrote customer service asking for a phone number. They told me everything in customer service is handled by email only. I told them them mentioned how they were following in Groupons footsteps but Groupon gives us a phone number to call. Told them no phone number, no more business from me. I would love to hear from just any one person if they actually have recieved their cards yet. Thanks
Foolsgold – how do you know the cards are purchased in Florida, mailed to Canada, and then re-mailed from there?
I’m just curious about your level of knowledge; no offense intended here.
Thanks.
If you send me a better brand of booze, I can get you an even better level of knowledge.
Seriously, some of the BBB and similar sites do show an extremely minute fulfillment rate, I doubt that even one percent of orders get shipped. They only send emails claiming to have shipped the orders. I mean face it folks, if anything was actually being sent whether by common-carrier or post office, don’t you think a simple little light-weight gift card would have arrived by now? How difficult is it to actually mail a gift card? How long does it really take for anything to arrive whether its from Florida or Canada or Whereever? Some Florida people are running a scam site. The offer gift cards at half price, they claim that some strange force “limits” them to the number of orders and that this strange force seems to limit the speed with which the mailman will carry your envelope as opposed to all the other envelopes the post office processes.
And you people believe all this guff because you truly want a 100 dollar walmart gift card for fifty dollars. Well we all want that. Nothing wrong with wanting it. The only problem is your believing that you are actually going to get it. You are not going to get some half priced card. Not after one week, not after six weeks, not after a zillion weeks. That “strange force” prevents it. Its a scam. Neither Mr. Duck nor I can quite figure out how the scamsters get to take money out of the system, but that doesn’t change it from being a scam. Get with it folks! Your Fairy God Mother died long ago! Nobody is giving you 100 dollar cards for 50 dollars.
I ordered a Walmart gift card on Aug 12. Received an email Aug 13 saying that it was shipped. However, it’s now Sep 7th and NO gift card. My original notification said it would arrive no later than Sept 7th-9th. I’ll let you know IF I get it. I seriously think it’s a major scam. I’ve emailed Cardilly today to let them know. I’m sure I’ll get the same canned repsonse as others have received.
Some people are interested in how a company could get away with something like this and are using that as evidence that the company must be legitimate.
Without getting too much into the details have how merchant processing works, the owners of Cardilly will be able to get most of the money from credit card transactions immediately. They have chosen a processor that doesn’t have strict requirements of holding onto funds. By the time the chargebacks come (the reason why Cardilly gives it’s absurd 4 week timeline), there will be no money left in their bank account to pull from because the owners of Cardilly would have already taken it out.
As for the size of the fraud, it’s not big enough to interest law enforcement agencies because of the added issue of operations in Canada. That’s how Cardilly owners think they can get away. They aren’t trying to take advantage of some legal loophole, they just hope it will be too difficult to track them down.
>I agree this is very odd, but how will they make any money?
>All Credit cards guarantee refunds on this type of transaction,
>and I think they can all chargeback to the card collection folks
Apparently its been a scheme to simply have massive transactions so that those people who are not prompt in notifying their credit card companies will lose their money and even those who do notify their card companies promptly will possibly be out money because the Cardilly people are Taking The Money And Running leaving somebody holding the bag.
Cardilly doesn’t care if the bank or the customer winds up out the money, as long as Cardily can withdraw it and stash it somewhere in Florida beyond the reach of bankruptcy courts.
Anyone who sent a check is a fool. Anyone who used a card is probably a fool too but may not have suffered a loss. I don’t know how the banks and processors settle these things amongst themselves. It may just be a cost of doing business for them since they make so much money on interest payments by card holders that they may not care.
This intermediate step of “ship the cards to Canada” and dribble them back is just to add complexity and some strawman to the heap. The basic premise … that it takes three to four weeks to mail a gift card to someone is absurd. If they were ever going to mail them they could do it within 24 hours. If the post office was ever going to deliver them, they could do it in 3 to 4 days, max. This “artificial time lag” is absurd.
Send us fifty and we will send you back 100 the next day is strange.
Send us fifty and we will send you back 100 on the next full moon is even more strange. If they are not going to send it promptly then they are not going to send it at all.
FoolsGold as usual I think you’ve been right about this all along, although I don’t agree that the 100 for 50 was as much of a red flag as many suggest – there are many “half off” deal all over the place to generate business and/or buzz, and although Wal Mart cards seemed an especially good deal that didn’t make it a red flag.
BUT, I still don’t have any cards and it appears to me that the scam is along the lines you are suggesting where it’s a numbers game – Cardilly is expecting to generate 100s of thousands in revenue, hoping to get to keep tens of thousands and disappear. Still, seems like you could, for example, track down the domain owners and ISP info pretty easily. This is grand larceny given the amount of money so I still don’t see how the risk would be seen as worth the paltry reward, even for a profoundly dishonest group.
Well, they probably also sell the credit card info to crooks and that provides some income too and they they have this huge list they can contact with emails about “send 22.49 to join the class action asset recovery program”. With e-marketing it never matters how many people you offend or how many you outright steal from.
The cost of generating these automatic responses is zilch. The computer automatically says that “the check is in the mail” … er uh, cards. Ain’t no cost to cheating zillions to get a few whose money sticks in your accounts somehow.
Yes, there may be quite a few discount deals and coupon deals out there, most of them not really bargains and many of them not quite fully legit anyway. Buy you merchandise at 100 and sell it at 50 but its oh so trendy to use a coupon … so that may make it “trendy” but it doesn’t make it sensible or successful. There is absolutely no reason for anyone who actually receives these non-existent cards to become a more loyal and more attractive WalMart customer. It gains Walmart nothing, it gains Cardilly nothing. Therefore it ain’t really happening and ain’t really gonna happen.
There is no profit in buying a gift card at 100 and selling it at 50, no matter how many times you chant, meditate, caress a crystal or bow in the direction of Groupon’s headquarters. Ain’t no profit in it, Mac. None. Therefore it ain’t actually happening. And it ain’t going to happen. No one is actually sending out cards. They sent the first dribbles out to start the ball rolling, thats all.
I CONTACTED CARDILLY through email and ask them to prove that they are not scamming people.There reply was,give us your order no..So,I sent them another email that said,I know you are scamming people and from what I have been reading in the BLOGS you are getting close to be caught.After this email,I checked there site to see if they were BOLD enough to continue,Starting fro SEPT 5 – 8,they kept posting,soldout.I have been tracking them for over 2 weeks PRIOR and THEY NEVER SOLDOUT THAT FAST!! Now,for the lastTWO DAYS,they have been showing only 1 card offer,that hasn’t SOLDOUT.In conclusion,they must have gotten SPOOKED there for a few days but,they are slowly(with less cards) back up and running.Hope you can come to the same conclusion I have without TELLING YOU SO!!!!
BBB of Sarasota, FL has eleven pending complaints against CarDilly which are unlikely to be resolved as all mail from the BBB to Cardilly has been returned by the post office as “delivery refused”. No determination has been made that the company is actually located at the address given. The company is not registered with the Florida Secretary of State.
The BBB now has over 40 complaints against cardilly.com. The BBB has flagged them for numerous reasons, which are the same complaints those of us who were scammed have. There is no business physically located at the Sarasota address. There is also no SG Marketing (or cardilly) in Ontario. I suggest that complaints be filed with the FBI’s Internet Crime Center which has actually partnered with Canada to detect and prosecute internet crime.
After numerous emails to cardilly produced no response, I finally emailed them with an expletive in the subject line. Got a response which at no time even attempted to suggest that they are a legitimate company. I was amazed that I finally got a response. The responder actually sounded offended, but at no time offered any substantive responses or even a denial. You might want to try it, but make sure you use strong language in the subject line
5 Weeks No Cards Ive Been Scammed For $100 Bucks. Oh Well I should have known better. Anyway I Contacted them Through Email and told them i hope they Rot In Prision For Ripping People off. I just cant believe there website is still up and running ??? As far as a chargeback. I used my bank debit card and cancelled it few days later in fear i got scammed. So i guess im out the $100 bucks as so many others are. I sure hope they get Caught.
Ron
Caught?
That is rarely difficult.
Its the fact that crimes of no violence generally get light sentences and restitution is often ordered but is rarely ever made.
Profits are hidden somewhere or simply spent in riotous living until caught.
Florida’s generous exemptions from assets that can be seized in bankruptcy add an added layer of protection.
Criminal restitution is not dischargeable in bankruptcy, as it is a criminal penalty. This applies to persons and corporations (which are considered “persons” for this type of case).
Has anyone heard or read anything current on these scamming theives? My daughter and I buy gift cards often to make ends meet in gas savings and home and personal needs. I am disable and she is a struggling single parent and they got us for seven different orders and not one of these have come thru. They last wrote they were gathering our cards to send them express. I pray that they get caught soon so we all can see their faces posted on the news and internet and hope they pay dearly for how they scammed inocent ppl in this time of the economy making so hard for simple families to survive. We have not recieved any of our monies back so far, we pray hopefully the bank will get a chargeback. Good luck and God Bless all of you that have been scammed by these theives!
Here is the response you get from them now if you complain:
Hello,
First let me say that I am sorry that your order seems to
be late or at the very end of the delivery timeframe.
As I’m sure you are aware, we are a new company and
I guess there will always be some growing pains.
Shipping from Canada without tracking was probably not
the best way to go. But wanting to offer our customers
free shipping and not hiding the shipping in the cost of
the item, we seemed to have dropped the ball on this one.
We will be changing our policies and all future shipments
will have full tracking.
We thank you for your patience.
Your order shipped from Canada and gift cards are often
inspected by customs due to there monetary value.
We will contact Canada Post and U.S.P.S and put a trace
on your order.
If the trace does not turn up your order within a week, we
will just reship. We will send express which will get to you
within a few days only.
Or if you rather, we can arrange for a refund if it does not
show up within a week. But please do allow for the trace
results.
Again, I’m sorry for the delay and thanks for your patience.
—-
Cardilly.com Support
support@cardilly.com
Chris, I received the same reply as you did about 2 weeks ago. Naturally, no shipment has been received for the order I placed July 23rd. What irritates me is that this last communication we both received had me believing there was still hope. How stupid can I get? Meanwhile, weeks ago Bank of America took the charge off my Account and placed the transaction in a ‘Disputed’ category. I have no idea if I am forever protected agains loss, but I think I am.
Diane C. Lade, South Florida Sun Sentinel September 16, 2011
Florida regulators have been fielding complaints about Cardilly.com. The company’s website has no phone number and Cardilly does not have a state corporate registration, required to do business in Florida.
Second-market gift card merchants, such as PlasticJungle.com and Swapagift.com, legally buy cards below value from recipients who don’t want them, or in bulk from retailers. They then resell them at a discount or allow consumers to swap cards online.
Gift cards also are auctioned off through online marketplaces like eBay. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission said card shoppers should avoid auction sales, as those cards could be counterfeit or stolen.
Cardilly’s site claims the company has been in existence since 2006 and has offices in Sarasota and Toronto. A Sarasota address listed for Cardilly with the Better Business Bureau does not exist.
Cardilly purchases were billed through a company called SG Marketing.
An online post claiming Cardilly had great bargains appeared last month on FatWallet.com, a popular deal and coupon site. Buyers soon began commenting that they never received cards they paid for.
I don’t know if the culprits behind it are associated with a West Texas SG Marketing since there are similarly named firms elsewhere. It seems that initial post on Fat Wallet was probably a canary, that is someone paid to sing praises about a scam to the otherwise wary buyers. The initial posts remained up even when later posts turned fully critical.
Same story here. Now do I tell my bank that I bought the cards and never got anything or do I just tell them that I dont remember buying anything from this company. If I tell them that I bought something from Cardilly wont my bank say that you bought it so you pay for it?
Seems it was run out of Florida with fake addresses, the website had purloined text, they didn’t even pay for a website designer, there appears to have been one small group of gift cards that were purchased in Pompano Beach and may indeed have been shipped to Canada and mailed back to a very few initial purchasers, perhaps three in number. Other than that no one seems to have actually received a card.
Perpetrator seems to have a history with other scams.
I too got all those “don’t worry, we’ll track the cards” emails from Cardilly.
When the first cards didn’t show up I went ahead and disputed the transactions I had created (yes, transactionS – guess I was having a flash of “stew-pid” that week….) and received a refund of the amount plus foreign transaction fees from my CC company. Thanks CitiBank!
Hello! I have CitiCard too and was wondering how quick the turn around was for the refund from them and if you needed to submit any additinal documents. Also, how soon after you placed your Cardilly orders did you submit the dispute claim with Citicards? I had been emailing Cardilly so have those emails but I waited until about 3 weeks after the promised date so contact Citicard so I’m hoping they will refund the money. Thanks so much for your help!
Why are you emailing Cardilly? You think they will reply? You think they will even read your email?
My Problem Is I Used A Debit Card And Have Since Canceled it. So Im Screwed like alot of others that used Debit Cards. Oh Well I was the Idiot I Knew better. No refund for me i guess.
Ron
You just need to dispute the transaction and wait. Make sure you tell them you’ve emailed and gotten whatever responses you’ve gotten (if any). They have an investigation process that they go through; I can’t really say how long it will take for you.
I will say I did get a notice from Citibank that they were reversing the charges, but so far online my account says the dispute is “pending”.
Ranita call CitiCards FRAUD department immediately and explain that Cardilly cannot be contacted by phone. Also send Cardilly an email demanding a refund so you can note this on the Citi fraud documents. Card companies should issue a credit within days but you’ll need to follow up with paperwork.
Important questions and lingering doubts:
I don’t know if this scam is really over with or not. The site still operates as to satellite sites that seem to mention the offers.
While Mr.Duck seems to have hit the nail on the head: How do they fraudsters get the money out of the Charge and Charge-Back cycle, I’ve still no idea how that might be done.
Of course the primary question I have is how can people be so extremely gullible as to fall for this in the first place much less fall for it once again when these teaser emails about search requests arrive?
MrDuck seems to think that the ultra-steep discount of fifty percent is not a red flag because there might be some as yet unarticulated business plan involved. Others would say red flags were lack of a phone number and lack of other payment methods, lack of a verified contact person, etc.
Now I’ve no idea just whats going on but it seems the people behind this live in Pompano Beach, FL, have a history of scams and will probably be operating some other scam soon. My worry is how do people fall for these things in the first place. There is always the point where even the Rabbi goes running by yelling that he is on his way to see the dragon, but it seems this scam was obvious right from the start. I don’t see how anyone fell for it once yet some have fallen for it multiple times.
A friend if mine used a debit card for a purchase.
Don’t know yet if she’s been able to recover the money or not.
Maybe that’s their “business plan”: debit cards that funds are immediate from and can’t be recovered.
This may be the case F, though even as it’s now clear this is not a legitimate business I do NOT understand how they are going to avoid getting tracked given all the card and ISP information. Who received the payments? Who bought the Certificate? Cardilly is STILL active and selling cards online. The new deals tend to be essentially worthless, so perhaps they are covering their tracks now with “real” card deals. I think it’s also possible that the gameplan was to offer the “impossibly good” deals at first, collect a lot of money, then offer the lousy deals and see if they could make enough to pay off the initial losses during the long “float” period between billing and sending cards. If they *never* send cards, then I’d think they’d be guilty of grand larceny, postal fraud, interstate commerce fraud, and more. These are very serious crimes that could easily land the domain owner in prison for years.
Be sure to have her follow up on the bank that received her money – that bank would have the identities of the Cardilly perps.
It would indeed have been a better run scam if they had more “canaries” available and had actually sent cards, but that would have cost them some initial capital they probably were unwilling to spend.
This use of a Canadian remailer was probably done to avoid US mail fraud charges. As usual, US laws punish a thug far worse than a thief so fraud crimes tend to get soft pedaled.
Anyone who sent checks or money orders is out their money, maybe those who used debit cards are out also. Non-prompt attempts at chargebacks may be out of luck too.
Someone is left holding the bag, but I don’t know how large a bag it is.
I have ordered two walmart gift cards the last week of july and still have not received either of them.
Foolsgold I had not thought of the stolen credit card info, which would make this of value to them even if they eventually return the money. In terms of banking fraud I’d think people could at least find out the identity of those cashing the checks and follow up with local law inforcement, but agree that’ll be hard to do. Interesting that the authentic GeoTrust Certificate they had in this case was worthless as a test of legitimacy.
In any case the lesson learned should be to be even more skeptical of online transactions. .
I’m still not certain if this much-valued, by you, Geo Trust Certificate relates to the transaction or the transactor.
One aspect of the credit card data is that its mis-use is not necessarily limited to the present time. It can become a later “bonus” to the miscreants. As can some later “White Knight” who comes along with a “pay a modest amount to be included in the Recovery Fund Disbursement”.
Identity of the people involved can be a puzzle for some but the miscreants do not have to cover their tracks completely, they only have to obscure their tracks for awhile so that underfunded agencies with more important cases on their plates simply don’t take action on some lousy little scam that appears to be for a paltry amount. The fact remains that our laws are set up to focus on violent crimes more than on fraudsters who bilk the overly gullible out of modest amounts. Eventual discovery of the true identity of the people involved in Cardilly will be meaningless because the ceremonial slapping of the wrist is meaningless.
Cardilly is a complete scam, only an idiot would think they would waste their time peddling stolen GC. They get enough money up front by gullible people and disappear. Simple as that.
I got scammed too for their Walmart gift cards. I had purchased two for $100. I filed a complaint with my credit card company and about a week later I got a call from my bank that they were crediting me back my $100.
What gets me is why is their website still up? Can’t the hosting service be contacted and have it taken down?
It appears that they are now hosted in Chicago by FDCServers which is a known spam bot hosting firm that will probably harvest your email address. What sort of a legitimate operation in Florida would use a server in Chicago that is well known to Spamhouse and other anti-spam organizations?
Follow up: Although I have a credit on my card account, I got a note saying they’d contacted Cardilly who said they delivered the cards (they did not)!
I’d encourage the bank debit card folks to press the bank to follow up and tell them WHO GOT THEIR MONEY.
I’m still floored by how criminals like this seem to get so little attention from the card companies and banks. Police are overworked so they’ll need specific information about who the recipients of the money were.
This is the problem with police being so busy with thugs that they can’t really deal with thieves.
I’ve long been curious about how money is being taken out of the endless cycle of charges put on card, charges taken off card. I would think anyone who tried to factor their accounts receivable would be selling them subject to the credit card holders rights but that might be one way to take something out of the cycle.
All Cardilly does [did?] is tell the complaining card-holders “the cards are in the mail” and tell the inquiring banks “the customer received them”. Why would anyone go through all this nonsense unless he harvesting card information at some point or else harvesting some money at some point. It can’t just be a scheme to trap those foolish enough to pay by check or money order, can it?
So now its the Cardilly Clones that are appearing!
Incredibly this saga continues. CitiCards issued a conditional credit to me but even after telling them this was a FRAUD and SCAM they’ve asked me AGAIN for signed verification I never got the cards. If I don’t reply they’ll bill me for the $100 again!
This is remarkable to me because it means the scammers are continuing to communicate with Citi Cards so even a simple investigation should turn up real people to prosecute for larceny. I’ll be calling Citi Cards again, but in past experience they have very little information to give out about who takes your money. This is a HUGE defect in the card system and should be remedied with a legal requirement that the card company *must provide* on request a consumer with the name of the people who get their money. May be another pathetic example of where US privacy laws conflict with common sense, leading to scam loopholes.
More from the Florida Sun Sentinel:
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-09-16/business/fl-gift-card-scheme-20110916_1_plasticjungle-com-swapagift-com-gift-cards
Tips: Buying resold gift cards
Be wary of resellers offering large discounts. Most cards sell for between 10 percent and 20 percent below face value.
Check a reseller’s reputation or reviews on consumer sites and forums before buying.
Pay for resold gift cards with a credit card, so you can dispute the charge if the card never arrives.
The Federal Trade Commission advises against buying cards on auction sites, as they may be stolen or counterfeit.
If you can visually inspect the card, make sure none of the protective stickers have been removed. Check that the codes on the card’s back have not been scratched off to reveal the PIN number.
To report a gift card scam: Contact the FTC at 877-382-4357 or ftc.gov; or the Florida Attorney General’s Office at 866-966-7226 or myfloridalegal.com.