Here's a situation where I haven't been able to determine what is going on, and I thought I would put the minds at AK to work to come up with some theories.

We have a member who is receiving ALOT of refunds from JCPenney (4 or 5 different store locations) on their debit card. However, there are NO purchases from JCPenney on that debit card. We are talking hundreds of dollars per transaction going into their account - but no purchases ever being made. We're seeing a couple thousand dollars per month being refunded into the account.

Now, usually a merchant only refunds to the card you purchased the goods with. I've gone through all the normal scenarios, and we've contacted JCPenney's fraud departments at each store (talk about a waste of time - you'd think they would be interested in possible thefts), but have come up empty so far.

Any ideas or thoughts on what kind of scam they might be in on? Or possibly a legitimate reason for these types of transactions?

I've seen alot of weird stuff over the years - but nothing like this.

The popular scam now is fraudsters are going to court houses and finding recorded mortgages for home equity lines of credit and then trying to get the financial institution to do cash advances off the line and wire the money to another location.