Soulja Boy's Hoverboard Company Is a Victim of Internet Scammers

You know how if you get your identity stolen you always find out because your credit card company calls you and is like, "Hey, did you buy this ridiculous thing?" And you have to tell them no, you did not buy $400 worth of lumber at a Home Depot in Albany. The company then cancels the purchase, refunds your money, sends you a new card, and you go on with your life.

Welp, turns out that rapper/nascent hoverboard entrepreneur Soulja Boy has found out the hard way that when someone makes a purchase with a stolen credit card, someone still has to pay for that good and/or service, and that person is the merchant who sold it to them. Buzzfeed recently reported that 75 percent of all purchases made from Soulja Boy's web store (most of which consisted of Soulja Boy-branded hoverboards known as… wait for it… Soulja Boards) were fraudulent, and as a result, Soulja Boy owed $175,000 to Stripe, a company that processes online credit card payments for online merchants. According to an email obtained by BuzzFeed, S. Beezy wrote to Stripe:

I need help all the payments are fraud, 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.

Now, $175,000 is a lot of money, but despite what you'd think, it's not a lot of hoverboards. A Soulja Board runs for about $1,500, which means that internet scammers had only gotten hold of about 115 or so Soulja Boards.

As BuzzFeed noted, Soulja Boy is not the only hoverboard-monger who's suffered at the hands of fraudsters. It's estimated that fellow hoverboard company IO Hawk owes $900,000 to Stripe due to fraudulent purchases, and their competitor CyBoard owes Stripe $150,000.

In an email to Stripe, Soulja noted, "I can pay the balance but don't want to if its from frauds then I will be spending money over something that I thought would be prevented through your website."

To be fair, Soulja Boy is probably not wanting for money. He released four albums over the course of 2015, owns a stake in streetwear company BLVD Supply, has a signature e-cigarette, and has successfully revived L.A. Lights-style light-up sneakers for a product he calls SBeezy Lights.

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