8yr old son stole from me

[UnderandOver]

Hi I am not sure if this is in the right place or not but I hope that someone may be able to advise me.

As the subject line states, my 8yr old son stole from me. He has an Xbox which my husband bought for him without consulting me
Admittedly, I do not know about any of the login details for this device as I seem to spend the time limiting our son’s use of the device and encouraging him to do other things
Anyway at the weekend we were busy swapping bedrooms around and whilst the other children helped, my son sat on the Xbox most of the time and when he was taken off there, he went onto the PC

Anyway I have been billed today for the best part of £200 worth of gaming add-ons spanning the past few days. My card was used to purchase these add-ons and I had no idea

I completely accept that I should have overseen things better and in that sense I feel I let him down

However, he is an intelligent child and he understands that you do not use someone else’s card. He had done so previously a couple of ears ago via my iPhone and I feel like we mustn’t have dealt with it well or got through to him

I have been in contact with the company and they are looking at what can be done

The Xbox has been unplugged (funnily enough it was unplugged yesterday because I had had enough of the amount of time he had been spending on there and I literally made him do offlin activities all day - this was before I even looked at the bank statement)

My question is -how shall I deal with this?

I am so angry and upset, feel guilty for my own part in this (in that I should have been more aware of what had been set up )and also scared for his future if he is capable of doing this at the age of 8

I told him I was going to the police -
If we lived in days gone by ,I would have asked the local copper to come and have a quiet chat with him - but knowing how busy police are and How underfunded , I feel bad to try and attempt this. However, it is in fact fraud, and it was numerous transactions (maybe 20 transactions), not just one. He knew what he was doing was wrong yet he was compelled to do this. Does he have a gaming addiction? Should I look into this?

What would you do ? Has anyone been through similar? Any help appreciated

[UnderandOver]

Sorry for the typos, it’s late and I am exhausted 😩

[jaimelannistersgoldenhand]

Did he get your card out of your wallet and input the card details to download the add on?
Or did you or your h buy something from Xbox in the past and leave your card details saved?
Does his Xbox account have parental controls set up? A child account can be set up without the ability to buy stuff.
If you or his Dad log into the parent account on the Xbox, do you make sure that he can't see the parent password?

[jaimelannistersgoldenhand]

What I'm trying to say is that it is possible that the person who set up the Xbox may need to take a big chunk of the responsibility for this happening.

[UnderandOver]

Thank you for your reply
No, the card was taken from my wallet.
I had never set up a card on the account to make payments for anything. He is a clever boy and he was somehow able to use my card and to use an email address to set all of this up. So I didn’t even get any notifications about it as I don’t use that email address. The first I knew was when I happened to check my online bank last night (I had a big bill for my car and was checking my remaining balance and I saw all of these Xbox debits)

[UnderandOver]

I had not had anything to do with the password set up
My husband had set it up but our son had managed to hack into it somehow by discovering the password
The password for the Microsoft account has been changed now following the link that the Xbox people sent but I haven’t don’t anything to the actual Xbox console although I think it’s all linked through the online account

I don’t know about the child account bit though - would that mean that they cannot do this kind of thing? For the time being we have unplugged the whole thing

[jaimelannistersgoldenhand]

Assuming that your son has a child account, you can set it so that he can not buy or download anything to that account without the parent password.

I'd personally disconnect the Xbox from the Internet or simply change the Internet password for your home as he's clearly too immature to play online.

Does your son have the money in savings? I'd be taking him to the bank, withdrawing £200 in cash and get him to hand it to you. Virtual money (online, credit cards etc) are hard to visualise but holding the £200 in cash and handing it to you is more real.

As a punishment, I'd be getting him to do some chores. Outdoor ones in the garden will be suitably unpleasant thanks to the cold weather.

[jaimelannistersgoldenhand]

I don't know if this is a national initiative but round here, there are police officers linked to schools. They turn up to assemblies, school fairs etc so the kids know them well. I bet that they would be available to "have a word"

[UnderandOver]

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post and for the great suggestions x

[Mosaic123]

And your son is really pretty clever. Maybe you can find some classes that he'd be interested in yo direct his talents. Coding?