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Identity Theft Victim Gets Last Laugh
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Mar 25, 2005 08:47 PM
from the the-phone-is-mightier-than-the-sword dept.
from the the-phone-is-mightier-than-the-sword dept.
Ovid writes "Being a bit of a hypocrite, I sometimes whine about privacy in my blog. I do, however, try to be careful about not letting anyone get information about me they shouldn't and I rarely, if ever, use a credit card online. This is why I was surprised to find out one morning that identity thieves had racked up thousands of dollars one two of my credit cards. By early afternoon, I caught them and the police arrested them."
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Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Canada (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Canada (Score:5, Funny)
>>Someone ran up $2000 dollars worth of condoms on my credit card.
Good god, he must have had a big weekend planned....
Parent
Re:Canada (Score:5, Funny)
Heh. At my high school they decided to deal with the teen pregnancy problem by handing out condoms. The water balloon fight was epic.
Parent
Re:Canada (Score:5, Funny)
I think I see why your school has a teen pregnancy problem...
Parent
Re:Canada (Score:5, Funny)
My favourite condom story:
During the war the Russians ran short of condoms and they asked the British government to ship some over on the next convoy.
Churchill ordered that the London Rubber Company should ship a consignment of extra large condoms over but mark them all as "extra small".
The story maybe apocryphal but it's well known Winston had a well-developed sense of humour and didn't like Stalin, so I tend to believe it :)
Parent
SSNs mostly not protected in US laws (Score:5, Informative)
There are private transactions where the government mandates that an individual provide a business with their SSN, primarily anything taxable, like hiring somebody, or opening a bank account that pays interest, and by now they mandate it for most bank accounts even if they don't pay interest, and they mandate it for any medical transaction involving Medicare or most other government-funded health care.
For transactions where the government does not mandate that a business collect an SSN, they almost never place any restrictions on the business's activities with it, and they don't say that the business can't refuse to deal with you if you don't provide it - you're on your own.
There are a very small number of cases where some government, mostly state, places limits on private use of SSNs, or otherwise insists on some kinds of privacy protection. But in practice, those are usually not effective.
Parent
Reminds me of another well known scam (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Reminds me of another well known scam (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Uh... (Score:5, Funny)
> and I rarely, if ever, use a credit card online.
Don't you know whether you do or not?
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
I always say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, cards++ (Score:5, Insightful)
Cards are way more convenient, less hassle in the long run, and let you get an accurate tally of what you spend. Cash just means constant trips to the ATM, spending money in dribs and drabs and forgetting about it, and the risk of getting mugged when you flash it too much.
Parent
Re:Nah, cards++ (Score:4, Insightful)
Your purchases aren't monitored and stored in huge server farms God-knows-where when you shop with cash. And that, to me, makes a hell of a difference.
Parent
Re:Nah, cards++ (Score:5, Insightful)
Some tips for carrying cash, from a semi-professional gambler who occasionally carries thousands of dollars around:
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Re:Nah, cards++ (Score:5, Funny)
Pay by value is much better than pay by reference.
If you lose cash, you lose the value, but no pointer escapes the transaction. If you pay by reference, you leave a trail of pointers around increasing the risk of someone dereferencing your wallet.
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Identity theft protection (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Identity theft protection (Score:5, Funny)
Sincerely,
AOLuser
Parent
Be careful... (Score:5, Insightful)
You might have outsmarted them this time, but it's never a good idea to gloat. This is something you'll forget in time, but they're going to remember it for a lot longer than you are because they'll be the ones doing time for the crime. If they got really rough sentences because of you and spent several years in the slammer as a result, ten years later they could come looking for you to take away your life. Your credit cards would be the least of your problems.
Re:Be careful... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Be careful... (Score:5, Interesting)
And its backed in my case by a state law that says no matter how you get along with the local sheriff, if your record is clean, and you have passed the safe handling checks and have proved on the range in the presence of an licensed instructor that you can shoot reasonably accurately given the capability of the weapon in hand, he must issue a CCW to all who qualify as stated above.
Like the sign showing the raging dog and the loaded revolver pointed directly at the viewer says, "Never mind the dog, beware of the owner".
Do I carry? Damn betcha. Any chance of it being used? Only in my own home, or at work alone, and possibly if I should walk into a situation at a local convienience store, but the latter would have to be done under shots already fired circumstances. Otherwise the perp had better be in condition to get up from his face time on the floor and walk to the squad car.
The bleeding hearts among us all tend to forget that the perp who does this, usually makes a consious choice to take what he wants/needs illegally from those who earned it legally. Generally speaking, society as a whole isn't going to miss those that claim a darwin award for their miss-guided efforts.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
99.34% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Parent
Re:Be careful... (Score:5, Interesting)
In my home I am king.
At the 7/11 with a punk holding on the cashier, its a standoff, until he cracks a cap. Then believe me, its the last cap he'll crack. If he's got an IQ over 70, he'll hit the floor face down on my command with his piece thrown or kicked well out of reach. Bet on it. Those are his choices, its up to him which one because the 3rd choice, to swing to cover me will be a bad one. At that point I'm facing deadly force and can respond in kind. And if, because of my age (70), I'm not fast enough, at least I did try.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
99.34% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Parent
Re:Be careful... (Score:5, Funny)
Bunch of freaks.
Now excuse me, I'm going to play CounterStrike:Source on my brand new Intel 3.73GHz Pentium 4EE Processer with 2MB cache, my 10k rpm Raptor SATA drives (raid 0 for speed), 2 GB of PC4800 memory and ATi FireGL X3 256MB GDDR3 memory!
I'm going to cream the competition! Nobody will be left alive -- I can't wait!
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It's real hard to resist confrontation (Score:5, Interesting)
I never really thought how much power you the credit card holder have in these situations. A few proactive measures can go a great deal further than a phone call to a dusty beurocrat.
this is why (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:this is why (Score:5, Interesting)
But usually the maximum you are responsible under federal law is $50 for any fraud (not per charge, for all the fraud). A lot of places will waive that and pay it themselves so you don't get pissed off.
One time, I got a call in from someone who suspected this person was using a stolen card. They were at an electronics store buying a big screen TV and the teller said the guy looked suspicious. Well, we get the card info while the manager acts like he's "processing the order", we call the number associated with the account, and I ask, "Sir, are you in a store right now buying a big screen TV?"
He says, "No, I am not."
"Do you have your XYS Visa on you?"
"Yeah, it's right her--- where'd it go?"
We called the cops while the guy was waiting around for his TV to get prepared.
Anyway, long story short,the article is not about "identity theft" since the guy just stole the guy's credit card number / mail somehow, just regular fraud. It is an interesting article though. And what he described is pretty common. Figure we havd a group of about 50 people working full-time just talking on the phone with people who suspected fraud. This was not counting the people who called customers who may have fraud, nor the people investigating the fraud either.
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more restraint than me .... (Score:4, Interesting)
Violence Can Solve All (Score:4, Funny)
Ovid, you are a sane man.
* hey are you Ovid from Perl Monks & the Perl Monks Seti team?
Re:Violence Can Solve All (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Purchases were not made online (Score:5, Insightful)
First of many (Score:5, Funny)
Driving to Denny's at 96 miles per hour: $1.10 in gas.
Seeing identity-thieving bastards hauled off in handcuffs before your very eyes: priceless.
There are some things money can buy. For everything else, there's adrenaline and instincts.
Nothing being done about fraud at all (Score:4, Interesting)
Whats even worse is that I have never seen any online store do a basic check to see if users were on a proxy or not, which could easily help reduce fraud if they did.
Unrelated, if you want to see just how much credit card companies care about fraud, a rather funny link can be found at http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit_card/ [zug.com]. It explains why I dont have a credit card...
Amazon alerted me... (Score:5, Interesting)
They closed that account and notified me immediately without authorizing any sales. I called the credit card company and found that in fact there had been three or four transactions on my card which I hadn't made. They weren't for a lot: there was one for a tank of gas, and the total was for less than a thousand dollars. The credit card company took care of the charges but seemed totally uninterested in pursuing the matter, even after I provided them contact information at Amazon. Amazon could not give me the information directly, but were anxious to provide it to the issuing bank. and urged me to contact my local law enforcement agencies.
Stupidly, I didn't contact local law, but kept badgering the issuing bank. Finally I gave up and cancelled the account. The original card had of course been cancelled immediately when I reported the problem, but I no longer had any confidence in the bank.
It's pretty bad when Amazon does a better job of tracking my credit card than the issuing bank does. Of course, I still do business with Amazon and I don't do business with that bank so maybe there's a moral there somewhere.
CC Fraud Not Identity theft (Score:5, Informative)
Identity theft would be if I opened up a credit card using your social or if I obtained a loan using your social.
Credit Card Fraud is stealing your credit card information and using it.
Too bad the media just keeps misleading people to believe the two are one and the same.
Chief Wiggum (Score:5, Funny)
I RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
I shred just about anything that might have any information about me, my family, or my bills or creditors/debtors. This guy coulda saved himself some grief. The kid prolly saw him check his mail from a PO box and then shake his head and toss the checks in the trash, where he retrieved them.
In fact, it bugs me Discover sends me those checks all the time. I never use them, probably never will, and wish they wouldn't send them so frequently.
Don't Shred: Request the CC company not send them! (Score:5, Informative)
Geez. Call Discover (or almost any other credit card company) and they will never send them again.
Parent
Got to watch hotels.com (Score:5, Informative)
Anyhow, the way the scam worked is they booked the room with hotels.com using my bride's card info. They checked in, tried to pay with a card that was expired (or did not work - they were not clear on that). When the hotel attempted to charge for the room service and the time they were there, it defaults to the card used to make the reservation. Card canceled, new one issued, no cost to us - but dang, you really have to watch your statements.
Online Credit Card Use Not Considered Harmful (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on, now.
Using a credit card online is much safer than using it at any restaurant in which someone takes it out of your sight, using it at a store at which an imprint is taken, or giving its number to someone on the telephone.
I do all of these, and like the vast majority of everyone else, I've never had a problem.
Many, if not most, online merchants, don't ever store your credit card number. The exceptions would be those who have a recurring charge capability and those who explicitly have the capability to store it.
Being aware of the security of your information is fine, but rejecting convenience without adquately weighing the relative risk is damned silly.
This isn't to say that the original poster doesn't have good practices when it comes to using his credit card at restaurants as well. However, nearly everyone I know who won't use a credit card online will pony it up at a restaurant without a second thought.
congratulations, ovid. (Score:5, Funny)
now go upstairs and help your mom with the dishes.
It could have been me. (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe not a single person as a target mind you, but valid card numbers none the less.
Once you get the card numbers youll also find that it is stupidly simple to make large purchases with them. Online buys can be made to drop houses for obscurity... and in person purchases can be made with a $300 3M card writer and a good inkjet printer and a bit of photoshop to create a physical card...
People NEVER verify the card holders name to the ID these days so having the actual card stolen from someone is just about as safe. (When they did attempt to ID me I would claim that I didnt bring my wallet, just the card and they would let me make a $599 purchase at best buy).
I commend him quick thinking and 'dumb luck' in your of your credit attackers... I have to say that if some people had been as vigilant I may have had their fate.
On the flip side of the coin, While I once had a stack of 50 valid and working credit cards obtained from one method or another... I now manage and secure online companies from attack and fraud using counter techniques which I used to skirt in MY efforts. I now have access to between 75 and 100K customer's information which Is locked down tighter than Fort Knocks if I do say so myself... not that this makes up for any of my past exploits, but to me, its a way of atoning.
Re:It could have been me. (Score:5, Interesting)
I seem to have stumbled upon a way to make every clerk ask me for ID, every time. I wrote on the back of my card in permanent marker, "ASK TO SEE ID." The first few times cashiers asked to see my ID, I was actually rather snotty about it, like they were wasting my time. Then I remembered what I had written and that it was working. I was stunned.
There is a small fallout though -- although 99% of my transactions over the past year have been really nice, I got one last week at Barnes & Noble that was just completely uncomfortable. The lady at the register saw the back of my card, took a hardass stance and assumed I was a criminal. She said (loud enough for the other customers to look up and stare), "Excuse me sir, could I have your name?" I told her my name. Then even louder she said, "UH HUH. RIGHT. WELL 'MR. BOYD' YOU'RE GOING TO NEED TO SHOW ME SOME ID." Then, apparently disappointed that I actually had confirming ID, she muttered quietly, "well sir everything appears to be in order. Just doing as instructed." Oh well. At least she asked. If it had been a card thief, she probably would have leapt across the counter to make a citizen's arrest while she shouted "COVER ME!" to her coworker.
Parent
Authories don't care about this crime at all... (Score:5, Insightful)
Last year Wells Fargo calls me. It seems some doofus used my Wells Fargo Mastercard to buy, among other things, $1000 in Victoria's Secret gift certificates from the VS Website. The expriation date was wrong, and the transaction flagged. Wells Fargo did NOT authorize the purchase, and I wasn't billed. (Other smaller purchases, under $50, had been authorized earlier in the day, but they were now being charged back since I said I didn't make them.) Bravo to Wells Fargo for being diligent about this.
Of course, I want to catch these shitheats. Victoria's Secret has their shipping address, so I think it should be pretty easy to get that address, call the police, and have justice done.
WRONGO!!
I call Victorias Secret. They say they can only give the shipping address out to a police officer/detective conducting an investigation, or at the request of the Credit Card company (Wells Fargo.). OK. Fine. They don't want vigilantes.
I call local PD. They say that since I didn't lose any money (WF blocked or refunded all charges) there was no crime for them to persue. If anyone lost money, Wells Fargo did. Call them and have them call police.
I call Wells Fargo. They say THEY didn't lose any money; they cancelled or blocked the charges. If anyone lost anything of value, it is Victorias Secret for (apparently) shipping out the gift certificates immediately without a valid payment now, or a valid expiration date eariler. They would need to call the Police to start an investigation.
"But I just called them! They don't care about who did this. They sent me to the local PD, and they sent me to you," I say. "I just want to know who did this. They have an address, but they'll only issue it to you or the PD."
The conversation took TWO more laps around these three parties before I gave up.
The story linked to in this post gives basically the same story in the sense that the local PD didn't give a shit about this crime in terms of investing ANY investigational effort. It was up to the poor victim to do all the legwork, and even THEN, the police seem like they take their sweet time getting there to catch the jerk-off criminals.
I bet the local DA pleads them down to nothing without a trial too.
In short, it seems that only determined application of stupidity on the part of credit card theives, along with an angry, lucky, motivated victom working hard at finding the theif, is the ONLY way these shitheads will ever get caught.
I don't even know why I work for a living...
Syringes... (and protection) (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironic as this sounds, what the cop did with those sharps (syringes) was more dangerous than your identity theft. Most likely, the manager chucked the bottle in the trash, and those needles are possibly now being reused by some dumpster diving junkie. Who knows what viruses, bacteria, whatnot those kids had lurking in their blood.
I'm insanely proud of your victory but I gently suggest calling the Red Lion, and TELL them that 'dirty needles' are somewhere in their trash. Two asshole identity theives in jail is small change compared to a trash collector or Red Lion employee getting Lyme, AIDS or septicemia, and spreading it to his family.
Also, those guys know who you are, are obvious heavy druggies and probably don't like you very much right now. They'll be out one day. Consider a pistol permit. I ALWAYS carry, and that's saved my life twice. Get some professional training [blackwaterusa.com], and practice every week, too. My close scrapes: Three guys went at me with crowbars (carjacking attempt in a parking lot...liked my M3) and their eyes got as large as frisbees when in under half a second they saw the business end of my Les Baer
Re:saved your life? (Score:5, Insightful)
With great respect, I don't agree, I saved my life. One was sitting on my car's bumper. The other then two ran towards at me full speed with full length crowbars. You think a raised 4 foot crowbar in the hands of a running attacker just wants to gently ask for my keys?
One hit on the head and bye bye droopus. The police caught the same theives days later after they had bludgeoned a woman into a coma, and stole her car.
Ok here are your choices: feel good about being PC and unarmed, and (God forbid) possibly end up a vegetable in a hospice or on a slab. Or learn to protect yourself, professionally, safely and effectively and live to a ripe old age.
Which do you want to bet your life on?
Do what you feel is right for YOU, all I ask is that you extend me the same courtesy. Unless you threaten me or my family with deadly force (and for NO other reason whatsoever) I wouldn't harm a fly. Fair?
I will admit, training is every bit as important as the decision. I have taken hundreds of hours of training, up to the SWAT level at Blackwater, and am probably better than 90% of AMericans who carry, including cops (many of whom are terrible shots.) Owning and carrying firearms is an awesome responsibility, I do not take it lightly, and unlike the NRA and most gun owners I SUPPORT yearly, tough, proficiency tests, which makes me rather unpopular in the gun world. But that's the way I see it.
It gets even tougher for criminals in my home where I keep my Winchester 1300 SWAT shotgun with 8 rounds of 00 Buck under the bed.
My 180 pound bloodhound, Flop, who can smell an unfamiliar person anywhere near my property and is gun trained is added protection.
NO ONE is going to fuck with my family. And yes, my line of work makes me have reasons to be this secure.
Murderers carry guns too.
Damn right they do. So, we should allow them to be the only ones who do?
If they carry one into my house they get carried out in a body bag, though.
Parent
Red Lion = Red Devil (Score:5, Interesting)
2) I have eaten at that Denny's as well.
3) I have checked my email on the computer in the lobby.
4) A PuTTY icon on the desktop should have clued me in that I should not have checked my email there.
5) Over the next 3 days, my ISP account was used to spam strangers like crazy, before I finally changed my password.
6) This was almost 2 years ago.
Nice to see the Red Lion is still such a hotbed of criminal activity
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
That's a fair question.
In this case, I happen to be "Curtis Poe", a grant manager for The Perl Foundation [perlfoundation.org] and in the small world of Perl, I'm moderately well-known. If I were caught making up stories like this, my reputation, and possibly my career, would be ruined.
Also, I hope to post the police report when I get it.
Parent
Re:I was waiting for the twist in the story... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't you get it? This isn't play money. It's real money that the merchants, banks, and card processors have to cough up. Where do you think it comes from? Higher merchandise prices (or, eroded retail margins, and fewer mom-and-pop retailers as a result), higher bank fees, and higher transaction fees. All of that, all of it, trickles down to the paying consumer in one way or the other.
Thieves like this are taking it from all of us, however indirectly. They're parasites. I completely tip my hat to someone who busted a couple of these punks while their greasy (stolen) Denny's breakfast was still impacting their short-term blood pressure. Truly delightful.
Parent
Re:I was waiting for the twist in the story... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's just stupid. Tell that to the waitress who served them and didn't get a dime when she could have gotten a real tip from non-criminals. Probably an overworked old lady who needed the money, too.
One thing that people should realize is that when an anonymous big corporation gets hurt, it's not really a corporation that's getting hurt. It's the stockholders. It's everyone that has a 401(k) or a mutual fund or any other diversified investment. These aren't rich day-traders, these are old people living off this money, or young people trying to save a few bucks for when they can't work any more.
What this guy did was every bit as noble as if he tackled a purse-snatcher. No, it's not his money, but it's someone's money, and that's a real, normal person just like you. He won't get a direct benefit, but he contributed to society.
Parent
Re:This story is very likely made up.. (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong answer. Thank you for playing. We have wonderful consolation prizes for you (or not.)
For what it's worth, and as I noted earlier in this thread, I'm actually fairly well-known in the Perl community. I'm a grant manager for the Perl Foundation, a scheduled speaker at the next OSCON, and an occasional technical book reviewer for O'Reilly. If I dared to create a lie this huge, my reputation would be ruined. I generally get job offers because of who I am. That would go away. Regardless of what you may think of my story, I'm not so stupid as to make this up.
They did have a photocopy of ID of one of the thieves. However, the registration (made through hotels.com) was still billed to me. And as for your info about the credit card companies, I know nothing about your experience, but it is vastly different from mine. If you have any credit cards, call and ask to speak to their fraud department (or, more likely, navigate through all of the damned menus they have.) I'm sure they'll be happy to set you straight.
Parent