Identity Theft x 3

I mentioned before that I had an old old closed bank account with some fraudulent activity back in 2007. The account was closed but BB&T still called me to verify that it wasn’t my transaction. Considering it was in Italy, obvious not.

Anyway, that Heartland issue that came up recently and screwed up a bunch of people had also hit my USAA military credit card. Well not me specifically, but enough USAA customers that they’ve sent everyone new cards (I’m still waiting for mine).

Well now my ING checking account has been hit. Luckily I check all my accounts daily, so I noticed a $1 pending transaction with amazon.com today. Knowing that I haven’t purchased anything from there since my Juicer at the beginning of January, I immediately called up ING to see what was up.

I have to say that ING was awesomely prompt and efficient during my phonecall with them. I was immediately transfered to a head honcho at their headquarters who spent significant time with me while he attempted a trace with Mastercard to see where this transaction was coming from.

I have to wait for the transaction to go through on March 2nd, and then put through an official dispute through ING, who will then handle the dispute with amazon.com, I think… Hopefully it won’t be a huge chunk of money, but at least the process is started to get this all taken care of. I’ve no clue where the information could have been stolen, I’m usually very careful. Then again I have some suspicions, which are easy enough to fix.

Anyway, so technically it’s my second time having to deal with identity theft, at least both times were caught early and hopefully taken care of swiftly. I don’t know why people try and do this kind of stuff, I guess there’s good money in it. But it really is annoying, and hurts a lot of innocent people.