Getting Started with Trinity · Chapter 13 of 15
Fraud: with NoFraud and without it
Fraud on a firearms store is not about guns. A firearm goes to an FFL who checks the buyer's identity, so stolen cards almost never buy guns. They buy optics. Leupold, Trijicon, Holosun, thermal and night vision, $400 to $2,000 an order, shipped to a house. We have seen the pattern on our own store: a run of orders in two weeks from brand new GunBroker accounts with stolen cards, all for premium optics, and a website order for a high end watch that shipped and charged back.
What the platform does on every store
- Address and security code checks on every card, with the result on the order page.
- A pause after repeated declines from the same shopper, which stops card testing.
- Hidden trap fields on the account, dealer application and contact forms that only robots fill in.
- GunBroker buyer gates: a brand new or zero feedback account buying $200 or more of optics, lights, thermal or night vision is held for a human, every time, even if a screening service passed it.
- Holds. A held order never ships automatically; you decide on the order page.
- Fail closed. If a screening service is turned on and does not answer, the order is held, not shipped.
If you use NoFraud
NoFraud screens every card order that does not need an FFL, in real time, and either passes it, flags it for review or fails it. A pass carries a chargeback guarantee. On our own store it screens every website order without a firearm and every GunBroker order from a new buyer; in 90 days it flagged 10 orders and we cancelled 5 for fraud. It costs a fee per screened order; get current pricing from NoFraud. A few of our dealers run it with their own keys; most do not yet.
To turn it on: sign up with NoFraud, get your API key, open NoFraud in your admin (left menu), enter the key and enable it. Every non FFL card order is screened from then on. See the order page's NoFraud badge for the verdict on each order.
- 1Your NoFraud API key
- 2Turn screening on; every non FFL card order is screened from then on
If you do not
Then you are the screen. The platform's checks still hold the obvious cases. Review the rest yourself before shipping, with these as the signals that matter:
- The street address did not verify (the card's bank says the address does not match).
- Billing and shipping names differ, or the name does not match the email.
- Optics, lights or thermal over $200, shipped to a residence, from a customer with no order history.
- A GunBroker account younger than 30 days or with fewer than ten feedbacks on a high value accessory.
- Rush requests, odd hours, a free email address on a new account.
When in doubt, call the customer at the billing phone number. A real customer answers. A thief does not. And if you are wrong, you lose a sale; if you ship, you lose the item, the shipping and a $25 chargeback fee, and your processor starts to watch you.