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For Delivery: An Extra Large With Cheese, Pepperoni and a Side of Fraud

Posted by Contributor in Featured Articles on July 22nd, 2009 | one response

Two years ago, I went to a trade show out-of-state. I looked at is as a mini-vacation, and opportunity to relax, to forget the troubles of the world for a little bit. In my naivety, I ignored the simple fact that people take advantage of people everywhere. Saturday night before leaving Sunday morning, I decided to get a little decadent, and I ordered a pizza for delivery. I asked the hotel desk what their local recommendation was, they pointed me to a nice little pizzeria.

Point of fact, smaller towns holding trade shows are very aware of their tourists. This pizza shop had to have been raking in money that weekend, all from temporary visitors.

The pizza was good. It was just what I needed after a long weekend. The heartburn came when I was driving home, and my credit card was declined when I was fueling the car. I called the card provider, and was told that I exceeded my card limit. This was silly, I was about two-thousand dollars from my credit limit, by my own calculations. I asked about the charges that brought me over limit. The customer service representative gave me a litany of charges involving athletic shoes, designer clothes, video games, music, all things I can’t afford, particularly in those quantities. Also, all were purchased that morning, all in the area local to my trade show.

I explained this to the representative, but was told that the charges would need to go through a dispute process, and that I would receive a letter in the mail within 30 days updating or explaining an outcome.

30 days pass, I get my letter. I’m told that the card was presented at each shop, and that with the evidence provided, the inquiry would be closed. Ridiculous. Two-thousand dollars worth of fraudulent charges, and there’s no evidence that it wasn’t me? I contacted law enforcement. I called the credit card company, initiating a new dispute.

Working with law enforcement, they came to the conclusion that whomever did this got my credit card number, CVV security code, expiration date, and billing zip code. The culprit apparently made a fraudulent card, using the information from my card on it. Thinking back, looking at receipts, I saw that the only person who had direct access to my card was the pizza delivery boy, who jotted down notes as he was imprinting the card.

For my own edification, I called the pizza place, pretending to be a friend of the pizza delivery boy (his name was on the receipt, thank you for that.) The manager on duty told me he was fired for theft, and that I shouldn’t call again. I informed the police of the pizza boy’s name, and the fact that he took a lot of my information down. They said they’d look into it.

Long story short, they came to realize that he had stolen quite a bit of information from quite a few customers. He and a friend had an operation set up where they made fraudulent cards using customer data. They’d use these cards on little shopping sprees until the cards were declined. Luckily, law enforcement caught the both of them.

Six months of police investigation later, I had the information necessary to provide my credit card company. By that time, I had been sent to collections over the two-thousand, late payments, overdraft fees, and other assorted fees amounting to almost another two-thousand. The card company took just under ninety days to resolve the issue.

A year after the initial problem, it was finally fixed. However, the damage to my credit was enormous. I had a number of 90-day-late marks, collections, a charge-off, a few of my other credit cards suffered heightened APRs (that’s money I’ll never see back, my card companies have advised,) I even had a line of credit closed due to this. Another year of fighting with credit reporting bureaus, I’ve still not gotten all the traces of this nightmare off my credit. I couldn’t buy a new car if I wanted. New credit cards are not an option. I was even declined a job offer, due to the negative marks on my consumer report.

My life has been damaged by this minimum wage pizza boy. I’ve lost a great handful of money that I know I’ll never see back. My reputation has been harmed. Pizza Boy’s prosecution didn’t end our relationship. His shopping spree will be irrevocably part of my life for some time to come.

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