Hey, how was everyone’s spring break? Good? Good. Mine was interesting; I was the victim of debit card fraud! It was the most riveting part of my spring break, and you know something, I could have done without it.
So here’s the story: the Friday before spring break, known to everyone else as St. Patrick’s day, I was out grabbing a late night fast food dinner, when I received a somewhat distressed call from my mother.
“What have you been spending hundreds of dollars on lately?” she asked.
I was shocked at this line of questioning! Does my own mother not trust me with my finances? Am I not responsible enough to handle a bank account? I was offended! That is, until, she read the charges.
Bear in mind, I had not left the city of Grand Junction since February and these charges started to appear Wednesday.
Two hundred dollars from an ATM near Denver, nearly $300 from an ATM in Aurora and another roughly $400 from an ATM near the airport. Three transactions, none of them mine.
And if you’ve read previous “Tirades,” you know full well that I am a poor college student. So never mind that I didn’t have $900, I had barely $40 at the time of the fraud. And because life is just that cruel, every time I, or someone posing as me, would go over the limit in my bank account, it would charge me a fee of $32 for each transaction.
Add the ATM service fees, the overage fees and the money that was stolen and the grand total comes out to roughly $984. Yup, almost $1,000 was taken out of my bank account, $1,000 which, again, did not exist.
I went into a state of blind rage, and asked myself a very simple question: how on God’s green and blue earth did this happen to me? I have nothing criminals want. I don’t have mob ties, I don’t have an offshore corporation, my most valuable assets are kept in my snack drawer (because they’re snacks) and quite frankly if you’re going to steal from someone, find someone with, you know, money!
But I digress. As I was pondering how someone could have obtained my information, something in my brain clicked. “That phone call,” I said. “Of course!”
This phone call occurred the Wednesday when the fraudulent charges were made, and was from my bank, or so I thought. In a male robot’s voice, my bank informed me that its security team was revamping and needed my PIN number. Well, I had no reason to doubt it; after all, it was my bank calling me, and it seemed relatively secure. Nope. In a short time, the scammer had obtained my information and stolen my nonexistent money.
After all the hullabaloo of calling the debit card company and having my bank shut down the card and the account, I retraced the mystery number that called me. The scariest part was that the number was my bank’s actual phone number. This means either someone at my bank is running a scam, or hackers are getting more and more sophisticated, and I’m not ruling out either.
Now credit where credit is due, law enforcement could not have been nicer, and my bank worked quickly to refund the lost money. The cop working on my case completely understood and worked diligently to bring justice. No word yet on whether the person behind this has been found, but if they’re out there, I have a few words for them:
Hey buddy. Listen, I get it, times are tough. We could all use a little bit of extra cash here and there, I totally get it. Here’s the thing though, you took money that was: A, not yours, and B, nonexistent.
Now, hacking into my bank’s phone was impressive, so you’ve clearly got some skill at this. You’re a professional, this wasn’t some quick job, this was diligent, this took time and energy. Was I really your best candidate to steal money from? I mean I’m flattered, but I’m not your guy. So please, understand that what you did caused an enormous headache, and made me lose faith in the bank system. Don’t rob a young man like myself of his faith in American banking. That’s what the Great Depression was for.
