Debit Card Robbery

Fear in Escondido. (Tanya photo, 2009)

An odd thing happened to us last week.

The kind of minor disaster that happens to everybody sometimes it seems--but had never happened to us.

When our bank statement arrived we found that someone had bought something very expensive--almost $2,000 expensive--using our debit card--which had never left our wallet!

The thief or thieves had used our credit card number somehow way up in Fullerton, CA (Which we still don't know where is!) at a Sam's Club--(Which we are not members of!) and made this expensive purchase without even using our four-digit pen number!

The purchase wiped out our checking account and dug into our savings account (which cost us $24 for the automatic overdraft coverage)!

Ouch!

And worst of all left us with not enough money to pay our rent which was due in two days! Stress time and double OUCH!

We went right down to the bank which is now Chase and was Washington Mutual and told them what had happened and very good for us they immediately canceled the card number which the thieves had compromised.

Before the two days before rent due were up Chase also mailed us a new debit card and replenished our account with the amount which the thieves had stolen.

GOOD and THANK YOU, CHASE BANK!

BUT!

HOW were the thieves able to get a card with OUR number on it and use it in a store like Sam's Club in another part of the state from where we live without using a pen number for such a large purchase??

To us "babes in the woods" this smacked of an inside job.

Some bank employee with access to our numbers and confederates in the Sam's Club at Fullerton must have pulled off this robbery without fear of being caught!

And no one is responsible.

I think this type of thing--including big-time theft in very high places--is one of the things that is going to bring this whole country down.

Tomasito, 2009



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