Last December I tried to rent a movie at a movie rental machine in the grocery store and it denied my ATM card.
I could not believe it. I made my selection again and I slid my card and my card was denied again. I was confused and frustrated because I had just made a deposit.
I stepped to the side and called my bank. I dialed the 800 number and entered my account number, but when I entered my pin number, it did not work. I pressed zero and I was transferred to one of the customer service representatives.
The man who helped me asked for all of my information and then told me that my account was “frozen” because I had tried to make a purchase at Best Buy in Chino totaling more than $900.
I thought I had heard wrong and I had to ask him to repeat what he had just said. My stomach sank and I realized that I had become the victim of identity theft for the third time, the second time in less than a year.
First it was strange purchases that started showing up on a credit card a few years ago, then it was a man in Las Vegas who was writing checks off of an account that had 60 cents in it and that I only kept open so that I had an alternate account.
Now it was someone who had somehow made a plastic card identical to the ATM card in my wallet and tried to buy almost $1,000 worth of who knows what at Best Buy.
The only upside to my current situation was that my bank had put a freeze on the account and the transaction did not have a chance to go through.
But I still felt violated. Somebody had access to my ATM card and they had decided to steal that information and use it.
Then I got mad. And I asked myself the same question I have asked myself each time something like this has happened.
Why? What kind of person steals from another person? Theft is not a new thing, it is just being done in a more modern way.
What really bothers me though about fraud is that the first two times I experienced something like this I was treated as though I was the criminal.
Especially with the case of the man in Las Vegas.
I spent more than an hour in the bank answering questions like, “Do you know this man?” “Are you sure that you don’t know him?” and my favorite, “How do you know he’s not somebody you know?”
And though the police officer who came to my house to take that report was very nice, there was only so much that the police could do.
I doubt that the man who wrote checks off of my checking account will ever be caught or punished.
The last incident however, is what really changed the way I do my banking. I went to the police department the day after I found out about my ATM card and a very nice police officer gave me some very good advice.
He said to never use my ATM card to buy gas or anything. He said to only use my card at the bank.
At first I hated living without an ATM card, but all of this has actually made my life much simpler.
I no longer have to think really hard about how much money I have spent because I am not constantly sliding plastic.
I also have to consciously make a decision to go to the bank to get money. Not having another piece of plastic and another distraction to contend with has simplified my life and helped me to be a little more calm.
Susan Acker, a senior journalism major, is editor in chief of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at susan.acker@laverne.edu.
