How NOT to steal a credit card number
I have a story to relate to you all about how NOT to steal my credit card number... This past Friday night, my buddies and I ordered a pizza from Papa John's. Having no cash on hand, I entered my credit card number online and charged it. As per Papa John's policy, customers are to present the credit card to the driver upon receipt of the pizza (a reasonable requirement, so that people don't randomly charge pizza to their friends' or parents' cards). This evening, after the driver was half an hour late, he called me from his personal cell phone to come down to pick up the pizza (also reasonable, since our dorm is locked and requires a key-card to access). However, instead of swiping the card into an electronic key store, the driver took a thermal imprint of the card on the receipt as proof the card was physically in my possession.
Sunday morning, I wake up to check my bank account, and lo and behold, there were four unauthorized charges to my account. Two from Nevada Hair Systems (a wig shop), one from OfficeMax, and one from Sprint Wireless, for a grand total of about 250 bucks. My first reaction was to call my bank and cancel my card. After trying to dispute the charges, I was told I could not until the charges 'posted'. When credit card transactions are processes, the funds are 'authorized', yet not deducted from the account until later. While this is a frustrating techincality (as the charges were definitely not mine), I begrudgingly accepted and had the CSR note my call in my account history.
My next step was to inform Papa John's that my card number was compromised through their system. After speaking to the very helpful store manager, my information was taken down and I was called back in 20 minutes (when our helpful driver came in for his shift that day). The driver, of course, denied anything, but the manager forwarded my case to the district manager and gave me contact information.
After battling with Sprint's call center (the CSR's there speak very broken english, sadly) and stopping for a quick lunch, I finally got a hold of the Fraud department. After giving her my card number, she found the charge. While she could not give me the account contact information, I give her the driver's cell phone number, and guess what? That was the number he applied my credit card to! The ingoramus, after contacting me through a uniquely indentifiable medium (phone), then used my credit card on his PERSONAL account. Needless to say, I made sure Sprint wrote down everything related to the phone conversation.
So I had the guy behind a rock. I called Papa John's again, immediately escalated to the manager, and informed him of my findings and that he would face fraud and theft charges. Las Vegas Metro, ever the helpful law enforcement agency, told me the only thing I could do for now is wait until my charge clears, dispute through the bank, then the bank assumes legal responsibility for the money (it's now a fraud charge against the bank, not me). If that doesn't happen as planned, then I can claim fraud through their department, yadda yadda.
Moral of the story: don't steal credit card information. If you're going to, never EVER link it to something personally identifiable. You will get pwned.