Califonia Fashion

Victim Location 92703

Total money lost $12,000

Type of a scam Credit Cards

He called to produce good for him which were silk screened printed hoodies, 400 units. He only calls me by phone and does not do any text nor email with the exception of emailing me his address on where to ship his goods. We went back and forth over the phone with what he wanted as far as producing the goods for him. He wanted "hip hop" shirts or hoodies and so I produced 400 hoodies for him. He goes by the name of Eric Galway but in the email said his name on the email said Eric Kalway. This should have raised a red flag but I didn’t question because it could have been a typo of the sort. He gave me his credit card number over the phone and made a deposit of $3600 usd then my partner and I proceed to produce the goods in which we also designed for him. The cc went thru for the deposit of 50% of the order and finish making the printed hoodies for him in a week in which he paid for the rest then we shipped it to his Canadian address. Shortly about a week after he called and wanted to make 250 more shirts but instead ordered from one of Mh brands I do sales for. So he wanted us to produce 250 more shirts but this time without a deposit. He told me over the phone that I needed to trust him and wanted to do long term business with me, I trusted him foolishly. When the shirts were done and printed, I called him for payment. Phone was turned off, then by end of day he called me and said it was ok to charge his card but it was declined. Also my partner called me saying that he never paid for customs and the custom fees were charged on my partners fed ex account for $1200! Then I called him and told him, look you didn’t pay for the customs fees and we got hit with the charges, he then told me, "don’t worry, I’ll take care of it." Since his card was declined for the 250 shirts I started to worry. He’s phone was completely shut off after trying to contact him several times and weeks after. I thought well we are hit with the 250 shirts and was a loss after that but figured I can still sell the shirts because it is branded and can move them into retail shops. So I’m now left with a $1200 debt for the fed ex account charges for the unpaid custom fees. Weeks went by and then he claimed that the charges we made with his credit card were fraudulent even though he signed for the 400 hoodies that were delivered to his address he gave and signed for all 15 boxes. A few days after the credit card company said that there’s a dispute for the charges and that he customer will be refunded for the charges we made. Now the cc company has taken back the funds and we lost about $9000 from that and not only that he has 400 hoodies or ours that we produced for him plus the $1200 from customs and the 250 shirts we produced. Now we have to wait 2 1/2 months for the cc company to get back to us whether or not we can get the money back because he scammed us from the beginning. I thought it was ok doing business over the phone rather than sending him cc authorization forms and such to fill out and I trusted him foolishly. Now I have to hire a lawyer in Canada to see if I can somehow bring him to small claims court since the business was not done in US soil and I guess it’s now a federal case. I don’t know what to do now…all the money transaction was on my partner’s card processing side and so he is out of $12000 but I am the one to blame since I made the deal happen.