Slashdot Mirror
Identity Theft Victim Gets Last Laugh
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."
In a situation like this where you know the culprit is standing only a few meters away from you its so tempting to confront the thief. I admire his resolve.
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 wnhy you get a prepaid visa or mastercard for online purchases. id rather spend the 30 minutes to put the cash on the card and buy something online with it than than let some druggy scum waltz off with my hard earned money. http://www.netspend.com/ Netspend offers inexpensive prepaid visa and mastercards that are useable anywhere.
... i would have found it very difficult to resist the urge to take some very gratifying physical revenge on the perps. bravo to ovidius. this won't stop identity theft, but it surely promotes a bit more vigilance on the potential victims ...
nothing worth possessing isn't possessed. or something.
Evidently, the CRMP are great at sifting through Mac OS X, too.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
How do we know this actually happened? People concoct amazing stories all the time.
In fact, I'd like to add that companies like paypal penalise those who get frauded by others. In one case, a friend of mine was "paid $1000" over paypal, and a week later, paypal took it away and charged him $500 for a really dodgy reason. I constantly hear of such cases over paypal and the end result is that the frauder wins in one way or another.
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/. It explains why I dont have a credit card...
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.
As a former scammer and hacker turned security consultant... I have to say that it is surprisingly FREAKING EASY!!! to get someones CC numbers... from social engineering tactics, dumpster diving, or just slight of hand / eye tricks... its possible to get almost anyones card number these days.
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.
The Code Ninja is swift with his tool, precise in his delivery, and deadly accurate in his execution.
And you are forgetting the 2nd ammendment to our constitution.
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
it's always good to hear someone tracking down their own criminals like this story. this is a prime case of "vigilante justice" being very appropriate - especially given that the police were reluctant to get involved _at_all_ until he had confirmed that both perps were in the building.
... i had a small online company try to defraud me last fall and tracked down the owner much the same. they wouldn't return phone calls or emails, so i took it into my own hands. through some dns whois queries, mapquest searches, reverse phone lookups and the like (all free, btw, because who wants to pay $40 just to have someone take all your fun :) and do it for you?) the short version is that i called his home phone number, then confirmed he was the owner of this particular business before railing on him for his poor service and demanding a full refund (which i received quickly thereafter). man, was this guy sure scared/surprised to get a call at his home number.
/.ers who have such an "opportunity."
on a tangent
moral of the story: i can relate the the ecstacy this guy must have felt when knowing you've had a hand in the takedown of someone who's done you wrong. i strongly recommend the experience to all
Booked into a hotel under one name and paying under another? The hotel didn't care? Yet fell over themselves to help the guy?
Police throwing away evidence?
Visa et al catching and cutting them off, but the thieves stay put?
Using the hotel computer?
.... you USians never stop to amaze us.
In similar situations I just handed over my stuff.
Nobody was hurt, I was protected (insured) so I did not lose anything. One of the thieves was later caught.
With all due respect I think you USian guys should consider what firearms are doing to your society.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Thats not worth the cost of the bullet, OR the hassle with both the authorities AND your concience.
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
1) I have stayed at that Red Lion in Portland.
;-)
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
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Massad Ayoob often carried a $5 bill in a book of matches (the bill and book were folded so that the money was obviously visible). He flipped the book away whenever somebody looked like they wanted to mug him (it flew farther with the matchbook's mass to help).
More proof that the only safe vengeance results in the death of the your mark.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
And it would have been safer to NOT try to FIND the thieves.
Better yet, when Discover called to confirm the strange purchases, he should have approved them. (Because stopping the purchase might upset the thieves and, since they have your ID, they might come looking for you.)
And everytime a terrorist attacks the U.S., the U.S. shouldn't fight back -- right? (Because the terrorists might attack again.)
You forgot to mention the safest and least expensive option -- deliver a pizza stuffed with rat poison. (Perps won't do it again, cops get to eat their donuts, ID victim goes home with a smile on his face.)
The conversation took TWO more laps around these three parties before I gave up.
You think that was fun? How about this...
Sombody charged my card AND changes the address for getting statements. Since I had not used the card in like two years, statements had stopped coming (a FEATURE!). So, I never learned about the fraud (or the supsequent, desperate pleas for payment, or the harassing phone calls from the collections agency...)
Eventually the credit had been sold around to two or three credit agencies and one of them decided to actually look up my address instead of just using the last one used by the credit card company. At this time, I learned about the fraud and started taking steps to get it resolved.
The credit agency, on learning about the fraud, promptly sold the debt as quick as they could (so they don't have to eat the cost), and by the time I got my act together, it had already changed hands.
Now I had a new set of people calling me, bitching about money. So I explained the situation to them, and ONCE AGAIN, they sold the credit as quick as they could.
This kept happening, I belive about 15 times, before I just stopped getting calls from people. Even now I'm not sure what the situation is...
I'm in the law enforcement field, albiet the private sector where six figure salaries are common. I spend roughly $4,000 to $5,000 a month on my credit-card for eating out, eating out, and fun stuff like personal electronics, motorcycle accessories, etc. Do you think I'd ever carry that much cash? Do you know what would happen if I got stopped on my way to my parents house on a traffic violation in my ML55 AMG and the cop decided to search my car? "Sir, is there a reason you are carrying $2,000 in cash? You are in Oakland. Sir, please turn around and put your hands on the top of your car."
Yeah, that's right. That's about how it would go down; black man driving a $130,000 MB in Oakland with 2K of cash in his car. As I mentioned, I work in this field. Trust me, my peers and the folks I speak to at conferences have no respect for anyone carrying cash. It's dirty. Your chances of having something bad happen to you from a legal or otherwise perspective is much greater if you carry cash, especialy if you are a minority and make a lot of money. My credit-card gives me anonymitiy when I get stopped by the man. The local threat is always the greatest.