Credit Theft

[Fallen]

So, I check my voicemail for some odd number and it turns out to be my bank telling me to call the Fraud Department. Never a good sign. I immediately check my mobile banking app and see 3 charges posted to Bradley Pennsylvania, also not a good sign, seeing as how I live in Maryland.

Long story short, called and canceled the card immediately. They were attempting to use it AS I canceled the card, so definitely lucked out that I caught this right away. I have no clue how they got my information, as I have my card with me. The last sites I went to for online transactions were papa johns and Amazon.com. Who knows when they actually got the info, though. Hopefully they send a squad car there to grab these people since they know exactly where they are (Walmart in F'ing PA), but I doubt they will.

Anyone else have stories of credit theft they'd like to share? I wouldn't mind comiserating at the moment.

[NocturnalRob]

Same thing happened to me about a year ago. Literally, people were using my credit card at Walmart, and rang up a massive purchase (~$1200 at Walmart is massive). Company calls up. I'm like...yeah, that's not me.

What sucks is that there had been 2 charges of around $200 each the day before that they hadn't flagged. So they ask me to prove that I'm not ringing up these charges. I could only say, "Well, these charges are being made in Pittsburgh. I'm in New York. At work."

It took another 45 minutes on the phone before the charges were reversed. Never found out how they got my information, but I canceled the card, and haven't had a problem since.

I'm assuming they credited the charges back to your account? Sorry you had to deal with that. It's a monster pain in the ass, but it could have been worse, I suppose.

[Jhynnifer]

In college they had those tables that advertised "we'll give you XXX if you apply for our credit card."

Welp, I did... it was like for food or something.

Anyway... I used the credit card to buy books, hoping to establish some good credit. I was paying the minimum every month like a good like consumer but about 6 months in I got a collection letter from the same credit card company.

Turns out, someone had taken my personal information, added an extra 0 to the beginning of my SS number and truncated the last one and charged like $75 two states away.

It was a very good lesson in vigilance for me and since then I've not had a single bad tick on my credit scores and I know exactly who I owe money to, when I owe it and consistently keep on top of my credit scores.

It was an expensive and long-term mistake, but I came away from it much smarter.

[Tgo01]

Something similar happened to me except it was with a credit card. My credit card company calls me up at like 7AM asking me if I've made these recent purchases, I told them no. They were all online purchases too, X-Box live purchases and Itunes. Since it was a credit card it was no big hassle really, they just canceled the credit card while on the phone with me and sent a replacement.

But it was the same situation as you, I had my credit card in my wallet at the time and I hadn't used the card in about a month. I'm sure someone along the way copied down the numbers and figured they would use the information months later so it wouldn't look too obvious they were the ones doing it.

[Fallen]

I'm assuming they credited the charges back to your account? Sorry you had to deal with that. It's a monster pain in the ass, but it could have been worse, I suppose.

Not yet, they want to transactions to post to the account first. I don't see this being a problem, as they were making charges as I was talking to them, but you never know. Definitely could have been worse.

[Kitsun]

My parents had an issue with a really sneaky fraudster. Somehow got ahold of some CC info along with other data. He then made up a fake yahoo account containing the name, set up an ebay and paypal account with matching info and ordered electronic tickets to the Yankee play off game last year. When we finally saw the charge on the CC, it took a lot of phone calls to convince them that the charge wasn't ours, the email, the ebay account and paypal account were all set up by someone committing fraud.

[AnticorRifling]

About a year had a cop buddy hit me up and ask if I was working LP that night. I said yeah what's up. He let me know someone had their purse stolen from the employee area of another store and he thought they might be using the card in the mall. He had a description from their cameras so I looked around. Found them in my store, got video of them selecting merchandise, paying for it with the stolen card (I was able to zoom in and see the name on the signature pad as well as pull up the transaction and match the time stamp to my video).

While they were shopping I let my buddy know I had them so came to the office and we waited. They came out the door closest to our office as soon as they stepped outside we rushed them and recovered 600 dollars worth of stuff from our store and a bunch of stuff from other stores in the mall. They got to go to jail. It was fun.

[NocturnalRob]

It was fun.
Just looks cruel to me. YOU BASTARD!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QirebzU0wuk

[AnticorRifling]

Can't see it at work I'm hoping it's someone getting tazered.

[Buckwheet]

Wait till a coworker goes through your desk and takes many people's credit cards and photocopies front/back with signature panel.

Then orders thousands of dollars of stuff on each card.

The person that did this to me made off without about 100,000 worth of charges before people at the office started talking about it and the person was caught.

[AnticorRifling]

Why did you have that kind of information in an unsecured drawer?!

[Jhynnifer]

What he said...

I know its illegal here to keep credit card information on file in an unsecure location.


Why did you have that kind of information in an unsecured drawer?!

[AnticorRifling]

GO GO being PCI compliant. Fuck I could almost do those audits myself now....maybe I should get that cert and do them.

[Abilene]

My mom's credit card info was stolen once somehow... I was looking into it for her, all the charges were in Japan for Blizzard.com accounts and some other game that when I looked it up, was only in Japanese..
Based on my research they were all the 1-character purchases, so probably were used to move stolen/farmed goods/money in the games. Not sure how it happened, but when I called Blizzard, I was surprised to find out they do not care about that stuff at all. I figured they would look at what accounts traded off with the account on the CC, ban the fraudsters, etc... but they don't do that.
They just said sorry for the problem!

Unfortunately, she had a card that didn't have fraud protection on it, but she changed CC companies. The good part I guess is that it was only something like 10 1-character ($15) accounts, so it wasn't too ridiculous.

[AestheticDeath]

Wait till a coworker goes through your desk and takes many people's credit cards and photocopies front/back with signature panel.

Then orders thousands of dollars of stuff on each card.

The person that did this to me made off without about 100,000 worth of charges before people at the office started talking about it and the person was caught.

Beyond the secure/unsecure thing mentioned, what reason is there to have photo copies of a bunch of other peoples CCs, front and back?

[Mighty Nikkisaurus]

A year and a half or so ago I was on vacation, out of the country, when I got a call about my card and some big charges made to it.

At first I thought it was because I was using it in a foreign country and was really annoyed they were calling me because I had warned them before hand.

Then they told me the charges were coming from New York.. they wouldn't have notified me of the charges since I lived in western MA, but because I'd told them I was leaving town so they wouldn't freeze my card or anything, they found it suspicious.

I got all of the charges reversed pretty easily and they were very helpful/nice to me about it. It was a huge pain in the ass to get things straightened out since I was overseas, but I also had a back-up credit card ready to go and again, my bank was very helpful and concerned since I wasn't at home when this happened.

[Ardwen]

Had someone in Hamburg Germany using one of my cards one week, you'd think the bank would have noticed I had simultaneous charges in new england and germany, luckily I check my accts fairly often, was a house acct used to pay the larger bills like mortgage, so had a sizeable balance, took about 3 days to get the cash back other then not noticing I was apparently flying 5000 miles in under 10 minutes the bank was great about it.

[Back]

As to how people get your card number... if you ever eat at a restaurant and paid with a credit card the server could be copying all that information down. I’d say it would be pretty easy to get someone’s credit card number and expiration date at any place of business.

One place I worked, not a restaurant, this guy got arrested for credit card fraud. Police came in and took him out in cuffs. They discovered our clients cc numbers in his pda. He bought a computer and had it shipped to another customer and went and picked it up. Guy was a dumbfuck and is probably getting dumbfucked in the ass in federal prison.

Oh, and the only problem I’ve had was charges to a phone sex company. My brother stayed with me for a week and he’s the one who made the calls. Yep, my evil twin brother.

[Delias]

The extent of credit theft I believe I have suffered was a $47.00 charge made on my credit card somewhere in russia... which baffled me. I just closed the account and paid the $47.00 and considered it an act of charity... combined with laziness. A sort of laziness inspired charity.

[Bobmuhthol]

Luckily when it happened to me it was one of those pre-paid debit/gift cards. I think it was a $16 charge. Annoying but obviously not worth investigating.

[Skeeter]

Someone tried to book plane tickets with my debit card on orbitz. Jokes on them, they picked the wrong account.

I called the orbitz people and they were super helpful. Since the person didn't have the password to match the card I had on file they couldn't complete the transaction so Orbitz couldn't tell who it was. Seemed odd but whatever. I called the bank canceled the card and all was wonderful in the world. I was only out about 20 minutes in phone calls.

[Buckwheet]

Beyond the secure/unsecure thing mentioned, what reason is there to have photo copies of a bunch of other peoples CCs, front and back?

They ordered stuff with them online like at best buy or whatever and then did in store pick ups.

They have to sign the receipt so then they have photocopies of the card with the CVV code from the back along with your signature thing. And its probably faster then writing it down?

The reason these were in a unsecured area was I leave my wallet usually in my jacket during the winter time for making runs to food places when I worked downtown. The company did not provide us keys for the locks at our desks.

So everyone's purses or coats were open to attack.

[Enitocin]

My sister was going for a job interview and needed her SS card on her. After the interview she left the card in her purse, and left the purse in the car. Someone broke the window and stole all of her cards, ID, and her SS card. That was a year and a half ago and she still has regular ID theft charges on her accounts.
Balls.

[Back]

The back of my credit card does not have my sig. It says “see drivers license”.

[Kuyuk]

The back of my credit card does not have my sig. It says “see drivers license”.

Mine said something similar, but the crazy bitch at the post office wont let you use your card unless it's signed. She's dumb. And old. (And black).

[iJin]

Thank goodness to credit monitoring. I'm too paranoid about this shit happening, so i'm always keeping an eye on my shit.

[Parkbandit]

We had $20,000+ taken from one of our checking accounts last year. Bank of America alerted us to the fraud, I called 20 minutes after they sent the email and told them to put the account on hold. That was after 1 charge that was fraudulent.

2 days later, they were still using the number at Walmart, USPS and a couple other places. Bank of America promptly put the money back into the account.. but had they just acted when they detected fraud and I confirmed it, they would have been out $2,000 instead of $20,000. They just seemed so nonchalant about the entire situation.

[Back]

I definitely appreciate the heads up from the card companies on unusual charges and always make sure to let them know when I travel. As much as they nickel and dime us to death at the very least they do watch out for fraud.

Were they strictly capitalist they wouldn’t give a shit who charged what to what number.

[Parkbandit]

I definitely appreciate the heads up from the card companies on unusual charges and always make sure to let them know when I travel. As much as they nickel and dime us to death at the very least they do watch out for fraud.

Were they strictly capitalist they wouldn’t give a shit who charged what to what number.

You do realize that most credit card companies hold you harmless to fraudulent charges on your credit card.. and as such are just protecting themselves.. right?

[Back]

You do realize that most credit card companies hold you harmless to fraudulent charges on your credit card.. and as such are just protecting themselves.. right?

Makes sense. They only really look after themselves. But in a way it does help us creditors.

And pretty sure thats government in action on the consumers side.

[Tgo01]

And pretty sure thats government in action on the consumers side.

Sort of. By law credit card companies can only charge you up to 50 dollars total or 50 dollars per transaction (I forget which one it is.) But somewhere along the way a credit card company said don't worry, we won't charge you a dime if your card gets stolen so almost every other credit card company had to offer the same to stay competitive.

[Back]

Sort of. By law credit card companies can only charge you up to 50 dollars total or 50 dollars per transaction (I forget which one it is.) But somewhere along the way a credit card company said don't worry, we won't charge you a dime if your card gets stolen so almost every other credit card company had to offer the same to stay competitive.

Yeah well fuck the money lenders. Jesus beat them with a rope.

[Parkbandit]

Once you get a credit card Backlash, you'll understand.