MONTREAL, Canada – While only in beta testing stage, the anti-fraud system being developed by 2much.net has already produced results, leading to a first arrest.In one case, a University of Minnesota, Wisconsin, student allegedly stole frat-mates’ credit cards and engaged chat hostess Tawnee from LiveCamNetwork.com and several others in private video sex chat.
The credit card holders were unavailable for comment.
In another case, several chat-studio performers were found to be partnered with an unknown credit card thief who would then “launder” hundreds of dollars through certain websites by taking the ladies to pay-chat, turning stolen credit into hard cash through paycheques. More arrests are expected in the near future, though no further details are available.
Live video chat site LiveCamNetwork.com serves as the testing ground for the software and services being developed by 2much.net for its growing network of streaming video chat sites. AHMAD, the system responsible for catching the fraudster, was developed following a recent spate of false credit card submissions.
AHMAD, the Automated Human-Monitored Anti-fraud & Detection system, is programmed to flag transactions it detects as potentially fraudulent, while simultaneously allowing a human operator to review these and other transactions.
“Normally this kind of fraud would have gone undetected,” said 2much president Mark Prince. “And would result in a chargeback once the cardholders noticed the charges on their statments a month later.”
The programmers at 2much use specific criteria to flag the transactions as suspect. “We automatically flag any transaction with a woman’s first name, for example,” said 2much Media & Communications manager Greg Jones. “In more than nine cases out of ten it’s fraud.”
Women are statistically the least likely consumers of online adult material and so a purchase under a female name must be scrutinized by human eyes before a decision is made.
The human operator was factored in to add a dimension of intuition to AHMAD. “Certain behaviours are key indicators of fraud, and can’t be programmed,” said Jones, who refrained from discussing other details. “We’ve broken them down and outlined them for our operator, but I won’t talk about them for obvious reasons.”
To explain how 2much worked together with their billing company and the Minnesota police to pinpoint and corner the fraud artist would be harmful to future prevention. “We’re out to hinder, not help, the thieves out there,” said Jones. “So let’s just say it was a fruitful cooperative process and leave it at that.”
At the moment, the AHMAD system is available to clients of the LiveCamNetwork video chat system exclusively.
