First, the $606. It went to Delft Liquors in Cape Town, South Africa. Oddly, I remember seeing signs for Cape Town, Texas, (although I can't find the town in my Web search this morning) on my way to Houston for my friend’s wedding not long before I stopped at McDonalds to buy coffee to keep myself from falling asleep at the wheel. This shows just how desperate I was to stay awake: I used my ATM Visa card to buy McDonald’s coffee.
That $2.00 (!) purchase was the last one I made on my card before March 31 when I logged on to my online banking and saw a string of charges for 80 cents. I followed the string until it led to some $5 debits, several $79 charges and another for a whopping $287 (the small ones were bank fees). All at the liquor store.
People responded in interesting ways when I told them someone else had spent my money at a liquor store in Cape Town.
My advisees, who were coming in to plan their schedules for the next semester, said sympathetic and outraged things, shared their own identity theft experiences, wished me all the best in getting my money back and hurried away with my hastily scrawled signature on their registration cards.
The receptionist and fraud operator at the bank listened well and said sympathetic things. I’d like to thank them and the bank that let’s them take the side of the little guy (mine) at least in this kind of case. After talking with the people at the bank, my hands stopped trembling. I realized that they were not going to make me prove, somehow, that I hadn’t actually gone to Cape Town and bought all that booze. They immediately credited my account with the amount of money the miscreant spent and launched an investigation. Later, the people at the Seguin branch who gave me a temporary card to access my temporarily credited account were equally sympathetic. They didn’t even frown at me for running in five minutes before closing. Everyone should do business with this bank. If I wasn’t afraid of losing more bits of my identity, I’d reveal which one…
The dean of our business department responded with stories about his father’s run-in with identity thieves and his own efforts to get that bank to look for the criminals instead of just writing off the big chunk of change charged at Best Buy and the $700 spent at the supermarket. How many carts would it take to total that much? Why didn’t this raise the cashier’s suspicions? The dean knew both purchases had been captured on surveillance video, and he wanted the bank to minimize the losses we all end up paying for by catching the criminals.
If the bank found the person who used my number, would that person have the money to pay restitution? How long would I have to wait before the case wound its way through the courts? I agree with the goal of keeping fees and costs of banking low, but I have to say that I’m glad I didn’t face suspicious questioning, appearances in court and a long wait to get my money back.
When I told Reza, he said, “Really? At least they bought something useful.” But they didn’t invite me to the party, I answered.
As I told the story to colleagues and students throughout the day, I relaxed and started to laugh about it. Although I’m still wondering who gave my number to a friend or whether H-E-B or McDonalds has a leak in its network, it’s hard to stay upset when you’re not losing any money in the long run. I’ve lost things that hurt much worse than this.
Scott said I was taking it all with remarkably good humor and offered to share a bottle of wine to cheer me up. California Cabernet, Texas sunset, tiny frogs croaking in their deep voices, martins alighting on their houses and bats flying out of theirs. I almost forgot the moment I noticed the first 80-cent transaction.
The next time someone in Cape Town spends $606 at the liquor store, I hope he’s buying me a bottle of fine wine from the Rhone region (I like a fruity, spicey Grenache base), a wheel of brie, truffles and a couple of crystal glasses.
With his own Visa card.
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