My Identity....In High Demand!

They did it again!

I got a phone call Saturday afternoon from my credit card company to confirm purchases made somewhere in New Jersey: $240 at Gap Kids, $200 at Champs, etc.

Of course I haven't spent that much money on clothes, collectively, in a couple years.

Obviously someone had my credit card, at least a facsimile thereof, and was on a shopping spree.

Note this is about the third time in the past couple years that we've had this type of fraud on our account. It's the third time we've had to cut up our credit card....and then go and change our account # on a bazillion recurring bills.

And recall there's that guy down in Orlando that tried to take out a mortgage or something in my name.

Champs, the sports store? Gap Kids??? Those aren't exactly places to buy things which can be re-sold for cash.

Draw your own conclusions...

And They All Want My Body, Too!

They got me again!

I just received a phone call from Bank of America - a fraud alert on my credit card.

Someone tried to spent over $1,000 on it at a Walgreens in Queens last night.  And somehow I sincerly doubt the criminal looked like the lady above.  Just saying...

Neither my wife nor I lost our card so they must have had a counterfeit one made up.

This is the second time this year our card has been co-opted by thieves.

AND recall also that a few months ago I discovered someone co-opting my identity down in Orlando.

Debt Collecting Vultures

So my phone was ringing off the hook today. It was some debt collection agency calling for my landlord. Three different people have called so far (a few times each) - and I offered them all the same deal.

CaptiousNut - If you tell me how much he owes, and who he owes it to....I will give you his contact information.

All three of them turned me down!

I really tried to sell my propostion too:

CaptiousNut - I have his address, his cell phone, his work phone, his email addresses....he changes addresses and uses different names. It's going to be hard to find him...

But still, none of them bit!

One of the debt collectors tried to turn my *deal* against me. After I told her that her company was calling me all day, she essentially said they would continue to bother me if I didn't give up his actual contact info.

CaptiousNut - Wait, let me get this straight. YOU ARE THREATENING TO HARASS ME IF I DON'T TELL YOU HOW TO REACH HIM?!?!?!

That one hung up quickly. But she's right. Until I *give it up*, I'll most likely be bearing the brunt of the harassment meant for my scumbag landlord!

Of course, I do very much want them molesting him; I won't play this game for long.

But the next time they call and ask if I am him....I will simply say *yes....how much do I owe?*.



I say good luck to these hopeful debt-collectors, because there's no meat left!

Was Bound To Happen

My MIL won't give her credit card number over the internet; instead I believe she *calls* and will only do so over the phone.

And I have a jurassic aunt who won't even give out her card info over the phone!

Why not? Well, for the fear of so-called *identity theft*.

Some time back I once mocked my aunt, telling her that she flatters herself, "...no one would ever really want TO BE YOU!"

So today I'm at Chipotle for lunch with my first wife and two children - when my credit card was declined.

Right away, I looked at Mrs. C-Nut with accusatory eyes and presumed that she had been late to pay the bill, yet again. Because that's what they're doing now, miss one payment and they shut you off. See my - Personal Credit Crisis - from this past summer.

But my wife insisted the bill was paid. Figuring this may be somewhat important, I put down my quarter-eaten burrito and endured the painful process of calling my credit card company (BoA/MBNA). Apparently, there was a fraud alert that was set off. The dude asked me if I charged $1 at Apple.com. I most certainly did not. And then he asked me about a $600 purchase at hocks.com or something (I couldn't make out the name of the website amidst the din of the restaurant). That sounded fishy to me - and my wife didn't know what it could possible be. But the customer service rep was pretty certain it represented foul play. The $1 charge at Apple.com was a test or something to see if the card worked, so he declared. Right away he said they were turning off the card, issuing me a new one, and mailing me some affidavit.

So what happens next? My wife thinks it's my landlord, but it most certainly is not. It's probably some waiter or bartender who ran the card some time ago. They wrote down the numbers and then later googled for my address. Or maybe not? I really don't know. I would like to know where they tried to ship the merchandise too. That would be telling, would it not? I mean, they could probably ship the stuff there and then handcuff whomever tries to take it home pretty easily, right?

But they won't do that and therein lies the problem. These clowns don't think it worth their time to chase down what they think are *small crooks*, so they just bake the fraud losses into higher prices for the rest of us.



It looks like hocks.com is some medical/pharmaceutical retailer. I just called them directly and left a message. I can understand why Bank of America/MBNA might not want to even help me track down the thief. After all, they just take back the funds they were going to wire over and wash their hands of the matter; but I'd presume that hocks.com would be more interested in nabbing the crook, a guy/gal who's just going to try the exact same scam again, and again.

I'd be really surprised if they actually did anything in the way of helping me or law enforcement, and that will either be confirmed or denied next week.

In the meantime, I guess I have to run a credit check or something to make sure no one has opened cards in my name. I don't really know. Have any of y'all been victimized thusly? Any advice?

So what exactly was *bound to happen*?

Well, that someone would officially want to steal MY IDENTITY and be me!

Lastly, my MIL, the one who's chauvinistic about *not giving out her credit card number* online...

She was boasting of her precaution a couple of weeks ago when my wife interrupted and retorted:

Mrs. C-Nut - Yeah Ma,...but you do other stuff like click on *SAVE THE CHILDREN* (spam)!

Whether it's driving too fast, eating poorly, fake-n-baking, mortgaging too much, clicking on pop-ups, or making ill-timed ETF purchases....we all have some risky habit or another!

Other pertinent reading I just came across:

Here is an interesting article about crooks stealing ATM cards and PINs.

And here is another on gift card scam artists.

Just A Link...To Make Your Blood Boil

First click here for background music; then (come back to this window, 'old coots') read on.

Miles For Nothing: How The Government Helped Frequent Fliers Make A Mint

Enthusiasts of frequent-flier mileage have all kinds of crazy strategies for racking up credits, but few have been as quick and easy as turning coins into miles.

At least several hundred mile-junkies discovered that a free shipping offer on presidential and Native American $1 coins, sold at face value by the U.S. Mint, amounted to printing free frequent-flier miles. Mileage lovers ordered more than $1 million in coins until the Mint started identifying them and cutting them off.

Coin buyers charged the purchases, sold in boxes of 250 coins, to a credit card that offers frequent-flier mile awards, then took the shipments straight to the bank. They then used the coins they deposited to pay their credit-card bills. Their only cost: the car trip to make the deposit.

He says his largest single deposit was $70,000 in $1 coins. He used several banks and numerous credit cards. He earned enough miles to put him over two million total at AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, giving him lifetime platinum-elite status -- early availability of upgrades for life and other perks on American and its partners around the world. He also pumped miles into his account at UAL Corp.'s United Airlines and points into his Starwood Preferred Guest program account.

A spokesman for the Mint says it has no record of anyone purchasing that many coins, but orders could have been shipped to different names and addresses.

The Mint says it costs, on average, about $3 to ship each 250-coin box. So $10,000 in coins would be 40 boxes, or $120 in shipping. As for credit-card costs to the government, a Treasury Department agency handles all government credit-card transactions and negotiates costs. No particular credit-card expense is charged to the Mint, a spokesman says.

I don't believe that last line for a second!

Thanks to my golf partner for the link (and the vein now popping out of my forehead!).

Personal Credit Crisis

Two days ago I was at the supermarket where my credit card *didn't work*. The cashier said I had a "contact issue".

Say what?

Then, later on my card didn't work at the gas station either.

So I pulled away from the pump and dialed Chase.

Apparently, my wife forgot to pay the bill due on June 25th. We happened to be away on vacation that week and the bill either didn't show or was lost. No big deal, right?

So I was already screaming at the customer service rep when she said it's always been their policy to *turn off* delinquent card holders.

That only made me more irate. I told her I'd had the card for 12 years and missed many a payment without them ever revoking my credit so she was full of sh*t.

CaptiousNut - It must be some new policy or something.

CustomerServiceStooge - No. It's not. It's been that way ever since I've been here.

CaptiousNut - How long have you been there?

CustomerServiceStooge - About a year.

CaptiousNut - Well I've had the card since 1997....It's never been *turned off* before. You need to turn my card back on right now or I'll never use it again.

Of course she couldn't. Like a knucklehead I demanded a *supervisor* who fed me some more BS - that they couldn't turn it on without a payment, that it had ALWAYS been their policy.

Fine I said. I got her name and told her not only would I never use the card again, that I'll use one of my other cards for everything henceforth....AND, for pure spite I may decide to not pay it at all and make them eat the 10 grand (2 months) balance.

Now there's no way I'd do that. As I said, I acted like a knucklehead but only because I was that PO'ed.

I have no problems paying the penalties and interest for a missed payment. But to turning the card off on a customer who's paid their bills for 12 years?

That's absolutely asinine!

My wife called up to yell at them as well. And get this, when complaining about them turning off our card without warning....they dropped this bombshell on Mrs. C-Nut:

"We have to.....the money we lend is UNSECURED."

No bleepin' crap it is. When the heck did the credit card industry finally realize that?!?!?!

So while today they are irrationally clamping down on creditworthy folk like myself....

Over the past several years, they let people like my Moronic landlord run up hundreds of thousands in debt on a dozen or so cards.

Just yesterday in the mail I could see a letter to him from one such company. Through the envelope it was easy to see his debt of just over $49,000.

So I've started using a dormant card in my wallet. Screw JP Morgan Chase, right?

But gosh darnit, the next card in my line-up is from Bank of America's MBNA....so that wanker Ken Lewis is going to make out on this.

The Mailman Cometh

Here's what I wrote about my landlord last month:

Now I swear, since our mailman comes like clockwork at 4pm daily, that my landlord has been swinging by to intercept his mail so I wouldn't see *foreclosure notices* and whatnot. (We share a mailbox.) For a Moron who's otherwise all over the place, he sure has promptly been there to retrieve his mail.

Well, it's no longer a hunch. It's recently been proven that this clown landlord of mine simply does not want me to see his mail.

Yesterday, as I got home around 4pm, he was on my property and upon seeing my Earth-scorching SUV he sprinted past right past my moving vehicle to get to the mailbox.

This past Friday, not only he he descend on the mailbox the second it was delivered, his teenage son came by not 15 minutes later to check it. They have a full-family assault going on, apparently.

On Sunday, the mailwoman rang my bell. She had a registered letter for my thievin' landlord that I needed to sign for. I said I'd just put it right back in the mailbox because he'd be by *momentarily*.

She said I know well what you mean, "He's been following me around town, everyday, to each of his three addresses. Many times he's gotten so close that he's *boxed* my truck in."

Now, this Moron's four underwater homes and *8 mortgages* have been known to me since day one.

But as for credit cards, I only suspected that he was robbing those companies as well. At a recent social gathering, I was talking about this crook and casually mentioned, "He's probably got 10 credit cards or something."

Someone there whom I just met added, "He's got well over 10 cards, and they are all loaded up....I know because I work in a bank in which he applied for an *unsecured loan*."

Then the other day I just got another confirmation of this credit fraud. A former colleague of his told me that my landlord had *several hundred thousand* in credit card debt.

Just imagine all the mail, all the phone calls he gets from creditors.



What a system we have where Morons can steal so much money and not end up in jail!

If you haven't already, see my post from yesterday - Give The Morons Some Credit.

Next up, I'll tell y'all how this joker is trying to wrest a rent increase from us. This one's pretty funny.