Company, Threatening To Press Charges For “stolen“ Merchandise”

Location: Chicago, IL

Hey all, in a bit of a pickle. I play video games sometimes, and sometimes when I have free time or a lull in work, I occasionally boost other players, in other words, I play on their account and help them do quests and they pay me money. Never had any issues until recently. Got paid by someone on the platform that I usually boost on and then he asked me to use Zelle to save on fees for ongoing work. I knew he was good for the money as I had done a bunch of orders for him so I agreed. He ended up paying me a total of almost $2000 with no issues. He told me that he was getting married and that he didn’t want to spend any more cash to finish up what he wanted to do and so he asked if he could just buy me something on Amazon or another retailer so that he could use his credit card. Again, he had paid everything and I figured if he was good for a Zelle payment he would probably be good for this.

Well, he was good for it. He sent me a gift card to a retailer here in the Chicago area and I ended up buying something for myself with it.

He ultimately ended up getting banned because account sharing goes against the terms of service of the developer. He knew this was a liability as we’d talked about it many times. I informed him over the phone and he was annoyed but he always knew the risk. He told me he’d get back to me to decide if he wanted to get a new account. Didn’t hear from him for a few days. Was out of town for work and went to use my credit card and it kept declining so I called the bank and they informed me my bank accounts were being shut down because this guy marked some of Zelle payments as fraudulent ($1000 of the $2000). I explained my side and they allowed me to file a counter dispute which they ended up rejecting. This was about 3 weeks ago. He also blocked me at some point in this period.

Today I received a call from ABT, a big electronics retailer here in Chicago. Explained that he disputed the gift card as fraudulent. I basically told them the situation and they said that I had essentially had two options: either return the merchandise and make it all go away or that they would be filing theft and fraud charges on both parties.

Seems like an easy answer, just return the merchandise which I will likely do but it’s also the principle of the thing. Not really keen to return something that was given to me just because he got salty. I’m also not in a position due to the nature of my career (investment banking / finance) that I can really afford to have any pending charges against me.

I don’t know if the retailer is bluffing about filing charges and they don’t seem to know either because they allege they’ve never dealt with this type of situation before.

Obviously I can return and go to small claims, but is there any argument I can make here that doesn’t involve me having to return the merchandise?