We’ve had two rounds of credit card fraud in the last few years. None involving whistles.
I stopped at a small gas station in the middle of Nowhere, South Carolina some years ago. All I remember about it was that they didn’t have electronic transaction gear in the station, just the old fashion, manual imprinting system. On my next AMEX bill I had $2000 or so of fraudulent charges on the account, all in stores in that vicinity in S. Carolina. $500 at Home Deopt , $500 at JCPenney, and so on. None of those fraudulent charges were made online, interestingly. This suggested to me that there was a ring of people including employees of those stores, in on it. What legit store employee would allow a $500 charge for someone who doesn’t show the physical credit card?
Then, a couple of years later my wife had $1200 pop up on her AMEX account for two one-way tickets from Miami to LaGuardia. First class, as I recall. What was scary about that is she never uses her Amex online and guards her stuff exceptionally well. On that one, we suspect a crooked waiter copied the info in the backroom of a restaurant or something. Those ticket purchases were made online.
Of course, the thing with AMEX is you call them up, tell them the charges are not yours, and that’s the end of it. They take them off your account and you get a letter from them and it’s over. My understanding is that they know that it is cheaper just to write off the charges than to try to find out who committed the fraud. Crime pays, in this case, I guess.
Which irritates me, because I’ve always believed that the banks could do more to prevent credit card fraud and identity theft if they were willing to spend the money.
I recently decided to subscribe to an anti-identity theft service. They do things for you you could do for yourself if you developed and stuck to a system and routine.
They contact the three major credit bureaus (Equifax and the other one and the other one) and put a fraud alert on one’s credit profile. Then if you (or a crook who has stolen your identity) tries to open a new credit line in your name, they won’t allow it until they speak to you personally on the phone and confirm you are who you are and that you indeed are personally applying for credit or a loan. They also, on your behalf, notify the credit bureau that they can’t sell your information to companies – which eventually stops the flow of those unsolicited, pre-approved credit care offers ( 0%!) that come to your mailbox and are a source of theft and fraud. They also remove you from the big junk mail mailing lists. It costs $10 or so a month. We’ll see how it goes.
The credit bureaus, by the way, make a lot of their money by selling your name and address. They’re not really necessarily good guys.
