I was hoping to be able to blog about something light and airy today, but my morning sickness has decided to last into the evening and things here have been, well, interesting. The icing on the cake was last night as I was getting ready for bed, Tim calling me downstairs in his most serious of voices. Some creep in Chicago, Illinois got a copy of our check card and went to town at Wal-mart and McDonald’s (this screams “classy”, doesn’t it?). My heart dropped into my stomach as I stared at our online statement of all the money that was drained, plus more. We immediately called the bank, had the account frozen, and this morning began the steps of rectifying this.
Once the dust settled a bit, we found that they were somehow using Tim’s card number. The thought of the bank, somehow, authorizing another card and mailing it to another state without our knowledge infuriated me. But once Tim spoke with our local branch manager, she let us in on some information that is making this particular issue a growing problem. Employees who are running credit cards and debit cards (particularly at restaurants) are hooking machines into the back of the credit card machines that makes a clone of your credit or debit card electronically. This then allows them to use this number very easily online, or in this case, make a physical clone of the card and use it in a store. A couple months back I read an article in one of my chick magazines about this very issue and how you should be using cash as much as possible, esp. in restaurants. I hate having cash on-hand, but after this incident, it’s something we are going to really start using more and begin to retire our debit cards.
Luckily for us, b/c it was a debit card, the transactions were declined, and this butt-face kept trying over and over, and with each try our account was authorized that amount (meaning it was still holding that amount on our card, showing each as a separate transaction). So chances are, 80% of the total amount will be put right back into our account after 2 pm today. But it’s still extremely unsettling that we were victims of this kind of fraud.
A couple things worth noting here: 1) We had signed up for a daily notification of our account balance, so when Tim received that and it said we were in the red, that caused him to check things out. If you use online banking at all, I highly recommend this feature, esp. if you don’t check your account daily, like we do. And 2) We did nothing wrong. This happened not of our negligence or carelessness. We didn’t lose our wallet, or give out our information to anyone - it was done that quickly and that easily, and it happens every day. I do not share this to scare you or make you afraid of anything. I only wish to spread awareness that this is a growing problem and it really can happen to anyone.
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