Originally Posted by
andrzej
It was a shock to me that my VISA (still in my possesion) was used the evening before at Wal-Mart, Target and ? (I forget). All three charges were ~$500 each.
I had someone clone my card a few years ago, and started making charges in San Mateo while I was in Germany. They did two back to back $800 transactions, which caught the attention of my credit card provider. They called the second merchant who described the card being used (different color than mine, and different wording on the front), and the thief (a female, with a baby in a stroller). She got away. They tracked me down by calling the PD, who e-mailed me while I was in Germany, and I called the credit card provider from there.
A night didn't go by, when I worked in the Comm Center at the PD, that we didn't get a call on identity theft. I even had cell phone service started in my name using my social security number, after someone accessed City employee records and stole the whole list. A neighbor who worked for the City had a computer shipped in her name to Southern CA. Clearly it's the fastest growing crime in the U.S., and causes a lot of damage while you're trying to put things back together.
Best course is to notify the credit bureaus and flag your records (painless, and all automated). The links I gave out at work were:
Federal Trade Commision Identify Theft site
Secret Service financial crimes web site
Both of these sites have very useful information on them.