Whomever said that crime doesn’t pay, is wrong. Not only does crime pay, it pays very well. We recently experienced credit card fraud. That’s where someone gets your credit card number and makes charges. You won’t know it happened until you get your monthly statement. Yes, you can protest the charge and the credit card company and the retailer where the card was used have to work out who loses what. That’s where the crime does pay part comes in.
When discovered on our card, we immediately call the card company and they gave us the retailer name. The retailer would give us no information - none, nada, zip. The card company closed the account and we notified the police. The sheriff’s deputy explained a detective would call us. Two weeks later he did. He wanted to know if we had any further information. ??? I thought he was supposed to be investigating.
The long story short is that according to the detective, police don’t investigate fraud unless it’s on a local level and even then, maybe not. Apparently he could not get information from the retailer either, if he called them. He explained that a lot of states won’t cooperate with investigations and some companies refuse to take the time.
The bottom line is that someone is out almost $1000 and nobody is looking for the thief. Not a bad days work. And, when you multiply $1000 by who knows how many crooks and victims and occurrences, it gets to be big money. Oh well, just add it to the cost of doing business. I guess it’s like government expenditures. If the crime rate ever equals government spending, we will be broke for real.
Here’s a tip. Don’t use credit cards on-line, at restaurants, or if you are alone or with somebody.
PMO
©2014
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