ID theft AGAIN—fraudulent charges to my Capital One card
As long time readers may recall, I sued Capital One in 2004 because they refused to provide ANY information about fraudulent charges to my Capital One credit card. At the time I tried to file a police report and the deputy refused because I had NO information about the charges. Capital One had deleted all references to the fraudulent charges prior to sending the statement. Judge Wake in Phoenix federal court ruled that Capital One has no fiduciary duty to assist me in any way whatsoever.
So I just checked the balances on my credit cards and it actually took a while to grasp what happened. I noticed that $0 was available and I wondered what I screwed up. I checked the recent transactions, saw the $286 charge and wondered what I ordered. I’ve been ordering a lot online since I’m building my new house off the grid and needed all kinds of power gadgets and stuff to stay cool while working there this summer.
Then I noticed the Walmart charge and I realized that those were fraudulent charges.
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I need this like a hole in the head.
I’m writing this post while holding for a person at Capital One, after pushing “0” numerous times since they don’t have an option to get to a person.
I think they just disconnected me, went from hold music to silence. How nice! Hoping it’s not true .... nope, the line is dead, have to go through this ordeal again to TRY to report the fraudulent charges.
This time I listened to all the options on 3 or 4 menus and I got to the option to report fraud. I’m on hold again. Finally somebody picked up. I tell my story and I’m transferred. And again. THREE times I had to explain everything until my dispute was accepted.
Time WASTED on the phone with Capital One: 43 minutes
Then I had to explain what happened to my visiting nephew, then I called the sheriff and now I’m waiting for a call from a deputy or maybe they’ll just stop by.
Last time, the deputy refused to write up a police report because I didn’t have any info about the charges and Capital One refused to provide any info to me. Of course they COULD have sent a subpoena to Capital One, but that would be too much to ask from law enforcement.
This time, I printed and saved the page online BEFORE Capital One disabled my access and deleted the fraudulent charges. And I even got the authorization codes for both transactions from the Cap One rep on the phone.
Will they actually investigate?
This will be another interesting documentary. I just recently changed my billing address for this card and I haven’t used it a lot. For online orders, usually at least the zip code for the billing address is confirmed. Both Walmart and Best Buy should have the IP for the order as well as all the information that was provided by the ID thief.
Even if I can’t pin down which merchant was responsible for the theft of my data, posting the listing of suspects would result in positive ID if OTHER victims from the same outfits find my documentary.
Unless someone broke into my home and stole my info for maxed out credit cards and nothing else (highly unlikely!), the only explanation is either mail theft in combination with pretexting or an employee at a merchant or bank stole and/or sold my data.
I don’t know yet whether Best Buy and Walmart require the 3 digit code on the back of the card to place orders and what other security measures they take. It’ll be interesting to find out.
It’s really amazing that there is NO interest by any law enforcement agency to determine where credit card data is stolen. If they compiled a database of all merchants and banks (could be bank employees—they have all the data when you take out a cash advance) used by the fraud victims in the previous 6 or 12 months, you could pinpoint immediately where the crimes occur. But because NOBODY gives a rat’s ass, people like me have to waste many hours and go through this hassle.
Potential damages:
I’ll probably have to fill out paperwork again. Capital One will bounce ALL checks and will not allow me to provide them with the check numbers, amounts and companies to pay those. That means that I’d have late, over limit and return check fees if I had used one of their checks to pay a credit card. Capital One doesn’t care.
Capital One states that recurring charges will probably be honored. Last time, they were all declined.
Capital One recommends that I contact everybody with recurring charges and provide the new account number. But I don’t get the new number for probably 2 weeks. It was embarrassing last time when my charges were declined, it’s a hassle for my vendors, and if you’re on vacation or otherwise not near your home/office, you can book the next flight home to deal with this crap.
We need new legislation to deal with these issues.
Right now, it’s cheaper for the banks to NOT investigate. If they had to pay every consumer for time, expenses and stress related to fraud, they WOULD investigate.
And since I’m sure that some of my credit monitoring services come with ID theft insurance, I’ll try to file a claim. It’s highly unlikely that they’ll pay as much as a dime.
Posted by Christine on 07/21/2007 at 01:04 PM
2004 Suit (credit limits, credit reporting - on appeal) • Capital One - ruthless banksters • ID Theft - demand your PIN! • (0) Comments • Permalink
