'Cause I wanted one': Girl, 5, goes on shopping spree as she buys gifts worth nearly $4K for herself using mom's credit card
WESTPORT, MASSACHUSETTS: A little girl used her mother's credit card to make an unauthorized online shopping spree that cost close to $4,000. Lila Nunes, a five-year-old Massachusetts resident, bought herself five pink motorcycles, five blue motorcycles, ten pairs of cowgirl boots, and a large motorized Jeep, almost giving her mother a heart attack.
Lila has now evaded punishment, but not before drawing the ire of her mother Jessica. Jessica recounted the incident in an interview, outlining how the child pulled it off and nearly cost her $3,922 in the process.
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'She asked to use my cell phone'
"She asked to use my cell phone," she told TODAY. Figuring she wanted to play games on the device, Jessica brushed it off - but soon received a late-night message from Amazon notifying her of the extreme spending. "I went about my day thinking nothing of it until my phone buzzed at 2 a.m. the next morning alerting me to a shipped Amazon order," she said.
As soon as she opened the notification, she saw that there had been a lot of unusual activity on her account and that her credit card had already been charged for a variety of transactions that she was not aware of. She realized that the products were all ones that a young child may purchase, especially if they were left unsupervised and had access to the appropriate finances.
But, she wasn't able to correctly identify the offender until she looked at the time of the purchases. She told the station how she used her logical abilities to identify her daughter as the mystery shopper, recalling how she had given the five-year-old her phone to play with the previous evening. "I had looked back at the time. It was around 9:30, which is exactly when we were in the car," she said. She turned to her daughter, who seemed guilt-free but occasionally dropped her head as her mother confessed her transgressions, and said, "So wasn't fraudulent. It was just this one."
'Cause I wanted one'
Lila revealed how she made the purchases. "You just press the yellow button, and you press the brown button." When asked why she placed the orders, the little girl simply said, "Cause I wanted one." "She ordered five pink motorcycles, five blue motorcycles, 10 pairs of cowgirl boots and a Jeep," Jessica revealed. "The bikes and the Jeep came out to about $3,180. The boots alone were about $600," Jessica said, before revealing how she attempted to return the pricey things but was unsuccessful because of their high cost.
"These were actually non-returnable originally," the mom said, describing how she frantically called the company's customer support line to see if they could find a solution. "I was like, 'Please, is there anything that we can do?''' she recalled. She claimed that after much pleading, the representatives finally felt compelled to send her return labels for the larger products, which were still inside her house.