Wow, I Was A Victim

I'm kind of happy it happened. I learned some important information.

OK, here's the details:

My wife and I were with our 7-month-old baby boy Lucas out doing a little shopping at the mall. Just going to T&T (a Chinese grocery store right in the mall) buying celery leaves, bamboo shoots, some squash to make baby food, and whatnot. The usual for us. Our baby is strangely well-behaved in public, like he has an instinct to only express himself out loud at home (or in the future, incognito on the Internet) but there is always the possibility of his last feeding not lasting the duration of the shopping trip. I paid for it with debit card. Then we grabbed a meal at a Japanese restaurant at the food court, I paid with debit card. Nothing unusual.

Then we passed by a shopping mall Santa Claus with photographer nearby. My wife said, c'mon let's get a picture of the baby with Santa Claus. I had to swallow my snide Grinch reflex and nicely explained that the baby is too young to know about Santa and he'd probably get scared and cry. She said it'd make a nice photo to send to her relatives in China.

So, we got the photo of our baby Lucas sitting on Santa's knee. The young woman doing the photography had an impressive looking set-up with fancy camera and computer editing suite. Our baby didn't get scared by Santa. He even laughed a little when a small audience of kids watched and made funny sounds. I paid for it with debit card and got a CD with the photos.

A couple of days later, we were at a shop to buy a light bulb. My wife waited for me outside. The bank card was declined. That was a shocker. A big line-up was behind me. The blood pretty much drained from my head at that moment.

I got red-faced and a whole bunch of thoughts went through me head. Did that check from LA bounce, was it cancelled (they are fickle over there). Wouldn't be the first time. I might have quietly cursed under my breath I'm not sure, but whatever I did made a guy look at me warily and shake a little as if I might attack him or something. I tried to force a friendly smile onto my stressed face, and stammered to the girl at the till that I'd withdraw money from a bank machine.

So, to a bank machine I went to withdraw the pittance it takes to buy a light bulb. Declined. WTF? Was I looted online? My imagination was spinning. My wife didn't seem surprised. Just a what did-you-d-this-time reaction. She had to pay for the light bulb with her bank card.

I phoned the bank and told them that something weird was going on. They quickly informed me that someone had made several withdrawals from my bank account with various ABM's along a highway and in different cities. How?! I asked. They had manufactured a bank card to loot my from my account, using my bank card's magnetic tape data captured with souped-up debit machine and pin pad used for a transaction. They picked up my PIN with a hidden camera.

The only debit card purchase we made that was different from what we normally do was getting the Santa photo. And, apparently from what I was able ascertain from bank personnel, that was ground zero for fleecing various others, not just me. That's what we got from Santa.

(I got my money back).

The photo booth person might be completely innocent. The bank security & fraud person I spoke to me emphasized that it is not always clear who the instigators behind this kind of sophisticated fraud and theft are. It's sometimes a matter of changing the PIN pad and this is sometimes done without business owner or worker having a clue about it. Then it involves propping up a hidden camera some place -- with zoom, the camera could be anywhere.

The actual person looting the money with fake card via ABM's would be be an underling (the fall guy if caught) with many buffers to the boss of such an operation. This is sophisticated organized crime. I can say this much for sure -- the bank has identified the point of origin of this particular scam that hit me.