[Dave]

I got a call this afternoon from my bank. It appears that someone has been using my debit card to make some purchases in Fresno, California, which is something of a surprise to me, as I'm sitting here looking at my card in MC, and I've never been to Fresno (thank god).

Anyway, the card has been cancelled, and they are sending me some paperwork regarding the fraud. I advised them I'd be happy to testify in court, or do anything else necessary to punish those responsible. I even suggested they could leave me alone in a room with the little scamp responsible for about five minutes, and I could pretty much guarantee they wouldn't have to worry about a repeat offense.

I asked them how this could happen, and they told me the way it happens most often is that a cashier at a resaurant or a bar, when given a card to pay a check, scans the card into a card reader which gets all the necessary information to make what I would call a "clone" of the card, and the unscrupulous cashier sells the info to third parties, who then make their fake card, go out and make some minor purchase to verify the card functions (often the small purchase is for gas, or in my case, lunch at a drive through), then they run out to some big box store (in my case, the Fresno Wal-Nart) and make a series of purchases, big but not too big ($200 to $300 range, not something like $1000, though it could total that much.)

Since I do most of my purchasing in this neck of the woods, I thought I'd post this here. If anyone else here has had this experience, perhaps we could compare notes, and mayhaps we could figure out where this is happening. I'd just love to send some folks to jail over this.