Soulja Boy thought he had been making bank on his Souljaboard branded hoverboard, which he was selling on his website for $1500 a pop.
But in actuality at least 75 percent of the orders came from disputed (likely stolen) credit cards, and the merchant is held accountable for the purchase price when this happens.
"I need help all the payments are fraud," Soulja Boy wrote in an email to Stripe, the company which processes his credit card orders."“And it sent my account to negative because they all say they weren’t authorized. please help in any way you can thanks. I don’t want to have to pay all this money because of frauds is there any way to reverse these payments and get my account to Good standing."All in all, Soulja Boy says he's out 175k.
While this is a tough blow, at least he knows he's not the only hover-sucker out there. According to the the Atlanta Journal Constitution, IO Hawk, which is one the biggest sellers of hoverboards, has a negative balance of $900,000 with Stripe, and are also getting charge backs on about 75 percent of their orders. Stripe says that the typical rate of merchant charge backs is about one percent.
Bottom line: If you see a hoverboard, there's a good chance its rider stole it. And maybe from Soulja Boy.