Credit card thief!

[Beginners luck]

Today after sorting through about a dozen of unauthorized credit card transactions totalling about $300. Getting my card locked down and having to dispute each and every one of them on the phone and on the net. I have truly realized that each and every one of us....Law abiding citizens..With all the precautions I take....Is vulnerable to identity theft. OHHH! Im MAD! And you know all the companies that billed my card protected the identity of the thief? I finally got some info from them that I could turn over to Law enforcement to MAYBE catch them. They had my billing address, name, credit card number and even the 3 digit authorization code on the back! Its been in my wallet the entire time! I feel like I was just beat up or something. Violated to say the least.
Thanks for letting me vent.......

We need to put identity thieves in a salmon outfit wrapped in roe and toss em in with all of the sea lions. Dirt bags!!!

[Herring Impaired]

I got a call from Discover just the other day asking If I was trying to book a $2500 trip on my card. I was not.... They also asked about a $2500 purchase at Sports Authority, nope again!
They made it easy, took off the charges, closed the account, and sent me a new card. Even sent an E-Mail making it easy to set up a new web access. My Discover Card lives at home, I never take it out of the house, so it had to have been hacked from an online purchase. Or, purloined from the Incoming mail (Balance Transfer Checks, that I've never used, and they agreed to stop sending) before I recently secured the mailbox with a lock.

Discover really stepped up....

[Chug]

Since having my Mail stolen, Drivers Lic. I Now, have locking mail box Beefed up , tad more Secure then the store boght one.
Canceled all CCards except Gas Card & one main card. I only pay Cash now for all my Transactions, Food, Toy's. Made My Credit spending Really slow & Rare. Any spike in transactions It should be flagged. ( I hope?) With keeping all copies, Just so I can tell that Gal In india, That last Thing I bought.

So Far To Date.. My ID is safe!!... Have not bought a house or Gun yet Or pulled over yet!!... So Till then I am safe!!.. I hope?

CASH is my Friend!!.. In the ID theft world. Nothing is safe!.

Yea might want to see about changing your Checking account too, Drive Lic# Etic. Sounds like they got good info on you.

Rocks around the ankles tossed head first Um um .. Wait, that would be BIO-Haz to the Water way! Bad for the Fish... OOp's.

[Joe C]

sorry to hear about that. it can happen to anybody. I've had discover card send me those stupid balance transfer checks every so often. I guess one time somebody grabbed the envelope out of our mailbox and started using them. The credit card company found out and cancelled the checks. But the guy spent like $40 at pizza hut with one and a collection agency was coming after me to pay the bill after my stolen check bounced. Such a pain over one little incident... I can only imagine cleaning up a mess as big as yours.

the sad part is, the cops will never do a ting. They don't have the budget. They'll bust a kid stealing CDs from walmart, but some dude scamming thousands is too hard to find.

I suppose you could get some big friends and go do a citizens arrest if you get a good enough lead.

[GraphiteZen]

A while back I tried to buy an MP3 downloading membership from a site "Sponsered by Google". I typed "mp3 download" and it was the first one to come up, highlighted like they are. So I go through the motions, ordered a one year membership for $19.95, give all the info for my debit card (BIG mistake) and when it said "click here to receive your login information" of course I clicked, and wound up right back at the front page. Tried to back up a page, expired. Tried to look around for a place to even log in, nothing. After about 10 minutes of staring blankly at the same screen with my mouth hanging open, I then checked my account info, sure enough -$19.95 to this "Google Sponsered" site that was owned by some company named Gato. Ironically, I then Googled "gato" and find that there are numerous consumer sites about Gato describing that they are a fraudulent site based in of all places, freakin Afghanistan. They say that another MP3 site with a slight variation in the name is also theirs, and guess what? It was sponsored by Google too!!!! At this point I'm pretty steamed. I mean REALLY steamed. I'm thinking how can there be all these sites about Gato and Google STILL has their sites sponsored... Among many other things.

The next day I go down to Bank of America and tell them what had happened, and that I need to cancel my checking account and start another. They say it's no problem but if someone attempts to charge me for anything else I am responsible for it plus the overdraft fee. I repeat that the reason I am closing it down is because my information was compromised by a fraudulent company so if that is the case I need them to block any access from this company. She says they can't do that without some sort of information about Gato or some crap I can't remember. I say again, they are in Afghanistan and they are fraudulent. I ask if it is possible to block them by the name only. No, sorry she says. We will close it down but you are responsible for any other charges. So, I closed down my account went to ANOTHER bank to start a new one and waited for the onslaught. Luckily, nothing else was ever charged but can you believe that crap. The whole reason I even used that site is because it was sponsored. Thanks Google.

[backlash442]

BL, shouldn't be a big deal to dispute the charges. Just did a 900.00 ATT charge on my dads card. Strangest thing was that ATT didn't even know what the charge was for and couldn't find it on their own records.

Had ID theft several years ago. Guy had my S.S.# and moms maiden name. Never did figure out how he got that. Best thing you can do if it happens is to call the credit agencies and have them put a red flag on any new accounts that are opened in your name. After the credit card charges in my name the guy tried to buy a house in Carmel, Ca. I ended up getting the loan docs sent to my home because of that call to the credit agency. Turns out the guy was wanted in at least 3 different counties in Ca. and escaped from prison in Texas. He even looked a bit like me and the Sheriffs Dept. had to come over to my house to finger print me to make sure I was who I said I was. Crazy. Finally caught the guy because his girlfriend called her mom and they were able to track the cell phone number. He tried to run over a couple of detectives when they went to arrest him then got into a fight with the strongest deputy on the force. Didn't end to well for him. How do I know all this?? Because I was proactive from the beginning calling detectives in different counties and filing a local police report to get things going. They kept me updated on the status of the case. Gonna be in jail a long time.

[Ryan Pultz]

Dealing with this on the company end is what I do and I will tell you why the company will not tell you the name of the person placing the orders or much else for that mater. Well the Federal government will not let us. If you call me with a fraud charges on your cc from my company I can tell you very limited info on it. Now if A cop calls and faxes me a court request for the info it is his.

You see the problem is people were given the info and well took the law into there own hands. The company that gave the info out was taken to court and lost big time. So when the privacy act was implemented the lobbied to have this included into it. so sorry you got your cc used without your auth. but to be mad at the company is not fair to them.

Trust me just dispute the charges watch your credit report and all will work out. Just make sure you file a police report. some cities like Portland will not investigate unless it is over like 500 bucks they will just file a report and let it go (sad I know) others will got full out and get court orders and bust some heads rp

[Silver Hilton]

My CC is through Bank of America (the Alaska Airlines card). Two weeks ago, I got a call, notifying me that there were some suspicious charges. After a short chat, in which I told them that I had not ordered $2000 worth of stuff through Overstock.com, they a) backed out the charges, b) canceled the card, and c) issued me a new card and overnighted it to me.

It's not the cheapest card, but that service may keep me from changing vendors for a while.

The company I work for now provides fraud detection services, among other things to CC issuers. The issuers are doing what they can to detect these charges before they even get to your statement.

One thing you can do to help yourself is be conscious of the web address that you are at. If you look at the stuff in the address bar at the top of this screen, you'll see http://www.ifish.com/<bunch more stuff>. You want to be sure that the stuff that is between "http://" and the next slash is stuff that is the real website for the business you think you're doing business with. If you see numbers like "10.122.37.123", or a different address than what you expect, you are likely being phished. You can see examples of this if you receive a piece of phishing spam. Just hover your cursor over the link in one of those mails, and you'll see an example of this type of address.

[Cornbread]

I SOOOOOOOOO!!!! feel your pain on this one! My ex wife had all my info from when we were married and used it to open up eight credit cards in my name and run up 30K-40K in debt before I caught on to it and turned it over to the legal system. It took me a year and a half of suing the card companies to get the companies to either drop the charges or put them on her and not me. In the end there was nearly 8K from one bank that no matter what they wouldn't take the charges off so I ended up paying it because my lawyer said it was going to be cheaper to pay that then to continue to pursue them in the federal court system for years. Took me another year to rebuild my credit and get everything squared away with the three credit reporting agencies. I had the option of pressing charges and having her sent away for a long time but I didn't do it. Anyone else and I would have but as much as I can't stand her my children deserve to have a mother who is not in prison. She ended up having to get a loan from her Dad and pay off the debt instead of going to jail. That was the agreement she came to with the legal system. So I totally feel your pain I spent years and thousands of dollars in the court system and for lawyers getting my stuff back to normal. The more info they have on you the harder it is to prove the charges aren't yours so if some one who has everything about you decides to do that to you, you end up in a world of hurt. I cannot even begin to express how much I hate ID theft!

[Beginners luck]

Thanks everyone for letting me vent..
I bank with a small credit union and fortunately their call center is not in India. They took great care of me. All of the charges were credited to me and a new card is in my hands already. They said they will take care of the rest. As much as I trust them. I will still double check. This could have been a LOT WORSE than it was.
Id still like to invite the PERP to a offshore fishing trip. All expenses paid!

[kilchisfisher]

You may want to try doing an Intellius search on your own name and SSN. If you get mystery addresses associated with your name and SSN, then you know there is a bigger problem there. If you ever get a name, you can use Intellius to get a lot more info on whoever is doing this.

I know someone who was able to find four people (men) using her name and SSN on the East coast. It isn't cheap. Each background check cost about $60, and she did 5 of them but was able to identify each user for the local police there. She put in a police report in each location the info was being used.

You may consider putting on a three month freeze on your credit reports at each of the three bureaus so they notify you if anyone tries to access it. There should be a number on each of the credit bureau websites. It may be worth the extra headache.

[drhall99]

The one recommendation I would make to every one is to NEVER use your debit card online. If your credit card number is stolen, you have a minor hassle to straighten it out. If your debit card is stolen, you have a lot less legal protection and your bank account will be cleaned out while they get it straightened out at the bank. Not a good scenario. Most of the companies online are good companies, but it never hurts to do a little research to find out if the company you are looking at is real.