Delivering Identity Theft
Back in 2007, I had one credit card. One. Not even a “back-up card for emergencies.”
By that point in my life I’d had a lot of credit cards, gotten into debt, and spent years getting debt-free. During that process, pretty much every credit card company ticked me off in one form or another, and I got to the point where I just wanted to lower the number of credit cards I had in my wallet. When I got down to two, the second card company did something to tick me off, so once my debt was gone, I vanquished that card to get me down to just the one card in my wallet.
Even though I’m not a fan of credit card companies, I am a fan of airline miles, so I was putting pretty much every purchase I made onto my one Citibank miles card. To help me budget, I’d check my account statement online at least weekly to make sure I didn’t overspend for the month.
That’s how I managed to quickly catch some odd charges that were racked up on my card. I logged into my account one day and saw that I had a $137.91 charge for DirecTV service. I don’t even have DirecTV. I didn’t even know if you could get DirecTV in my apartment building, so I called them to see what happened. Since I didn’t have an account with them, they couldn’t tell me who used my credit card. So I called Citibank to contest the charge. After telling them I didn’t have DirecTV, nor had I bought it for someone else, they agreed to dispute the charge.
The next day I checked my account online, and two more charges–and a credit–showed up for a restaurant that’s near me, but I hadn’t been to in years. I go through the same rigmarole with the credit card company. Needless to say, after getting these second two erroneous charges I had to close my account and get a new one. All in all, it wasn’t too painful; it was just a pain. The damage was just under $300. Petty stuff to Citibank, not so petty to me.
All three charges took place on the same day, four days prior to when I first checked my account statement—it looked like someone had dinner and a few movies at my expense.
I decided to call the restaurant as well and talked with the manager to see if they had any more information they could share with me. Luckily, whoever stole my number ordered for delivery, so I was able to get a last name, address, and phone number for this person. The manager mentioned that the person tried to place a third order, but he got suspicious and refused to take the credit card again.
Since I had that information, I filed a police report and also filled out a state identity theft complaint form. Time spent calling the police, filling out affidavits, and daydreaming about what would happen to the guy who stole my number consumed quite a bit of my life for a few days, but eventually it all worked out.
After filling out a lot of paperwork for Citibank, I eventually heard back that the charges had been permanently taken off my account. I never heard back from the police, so I can only hope that this person got arrested and learned a lesson.
I learned a lesson too. My husband and I figured out that my card number probably got stolen by a pizza delivery man who’d come to our house a few nights prior to the incident, and because I paid for my order with a credit card, he had to take a rubbing of it on the receipt. Voila, he had my number!
And now that I know this happens, I pay for my food deliveries in cash.
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6 Responses to “Delivering Identity Theft”
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Eh, the local Domino’s Pizza lets you order and pay via their website. No problem.
That delivery guy could just as easily been the server at a restaurant you ate at. Any time your credit card number is taken (or the card is out of your site), you could have your number stolen.
Moral of the story: Be vigilant, but not stupidly paranoid.
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[...] LA RECORD wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThe next day I checked my account online, and two more charges–and a credit–showed up for a restaurant that’s near me, but I hadn’t been to in years. I go through the same rigmarole with the credit card company. … [...]