Is Dell infiltrated by scammers?

I recently attempted to buy a top-of-the-line gaming computer from Dell. An Aurora 13 loaded with an Nvidia 3090, 64 GB, decent SSD storage, and a great CPU. A dream machine for about $5000. It’s been a long, long time since I bought a machine. I typically buy components cheap over time and build a computer that is a couple of years behind the “state of the art”, but performs well. However, my most recently built computer unexpectedly died. I could not put a new machine together, partly because it is so difficult to buy parts. So I thought, to heck with it, and decided to treat myself to a Christmas present.

Even though I try to build computers myself and often just try to put good rigs together for fun by shopping deals over time, I have bought several machines through Dell. They had always been reliable, and I like to support American companies. Most of the computers I have ordered were just productivity machines and never top of the line.

About 6 months ago, I got an excellent HP Omen machine for my daughter for a great price and was impressed with its performance. Unfortunately, the build times for HP were a couple of months out. Instead, I configured a similar machine on Dell, and while it cost more, the build time was only a couple of weeks. So I ordered it. My bank texted me with a fraud alert within a couple of minutes, asking if I had just paid 5k at Dell. The bank denied the transaction. No big deal, I cleared that and expected Dell to re-run the card again. I got no email or call from Dell about this. That was…