Owners of Calgary jewelry store say they were scammed thousands during POS purchase

Owners of a local jewelry store are out thousands of dollars after they say they were scammed during a point-of-sale purchase last weekend.

Vanessa’s Jewelry is located at the Crossroads Market in southeast Calgary.

On Jan. 24, owner Kim Xuins says two women stopped by their store and spent over 40 minutes looking at jewelry and even tried some on.

“She looked friendly,” said Xuins. “She’s so nice. That’s why I give for her and I can do good for her.”

Xuins says both women made purchases using credit cards totalling over $4,300, with each purchase coming up as approved on both the receipt and debit terminal. That’s why Xuins said she didn’t think anything was out of the ordinary.

“I can see the (approved) message right away and message said the money go in,” said Xuins.

“They were really excited to have finally a big transaction go through like that as we haven’t had one in a while,” said the owners’ son, Kevin Trang.

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Unfortunately, that excitement wouldn’t last long because later that night as the family looked over their daily sales, the money from those two payments weren’t there.

“It just said fraudulent payments,” says Trang.

Karen Clark, who also works at the market, says Xuins came in the next day visibly upset and, “was talking to a couple people and asked us if we knew how we could help fix the transaction of what they could do.”

Clark says the women must have known what they were doing, because what they allegedly did was a manual transaction.

“When you enter the card manually, it shows that the transaction is initially approved, but it’s only a pre-authorization and in order to get it approved they need to insert the card and enter the correct code, which wasn’t done in this case.”

The owner of New Concept Jewelry, which is located across the hall from Vanessa’s Jewelry, tells Global News that the women stopped at his store, too, but their attempted purchase of around $600 was rejected.

Trang says his parents’ store will now require their customers to provide photo identification before they will process any large purchases.

“I just really hope that never happens to any other elderly parents that are out there selling. It’s not fair,” says Trang.

Calgary police have confirmed that they have received the report and that the incident is under investigation.

“I really feel bad,” says Xuins.

“I worked so hard, you know. I worked seven days a week, not one day, you know, that’s why I keep business good.”

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