So imagine my surprise, when the cops got a hold of me last week.
"Hello Jared, this is Officer so and so," a stern-sounding man's voice droned in a voice mail message, "from the financial crimes department of the Eau Claire police. Just want to let you know that we have some of your checks here, and we're looking to get them back to you, also ask you a few questions."
I called him back immediately (feeling suddenly sheepish for my habit of screening calls), and met with him the next day. He informed me that someone had gotten hold of an entire book of my personal checks, and that in an unrelated home raid conducted by the police just two weeks ago, they had been found, and seized, along with some 15 other sets of stolen checks and similar contraband (ID's, debit cards, credit cards...), all of which were part of a burgeoning crime ring.
I was stunned, for a couple reasons. First off, I wasn't even aware any checks were missing. Secondly, I hadn't noticed anything strange coming through my account, no gobs of money disappearing (thankfully). I combed through the entire summer in my mind, trying to remember when I last saw this particular checkbook and figure out how in the world someone got their hands on it. I don't write a lot of checks, don't have a lot of occasion to bring a checkbook out of the house. actually, but I do remember one day in early July, during a flurry of bill-paying activity, when this may have happened, and decided I must have either left it somewhere, or dropped it. But however and whenever it happened, my checks were found by the wrong person, and it was only pure luck that the cops happened to raid the house where that person happened to live.
What ensued was a real mess. I spent hours (and I do mean hours) at my bank, working with a CSR, trying to identify the full numerical range of the checks that were missing, how many bad ones had managed to slip through, and determining which checks, if any, were still unaccounted for. Ultimately I had no choice but to close down that account and start all over with a new one. It was a colossal pain in the ass, and over just a few stolen checks. I shudder to think of what someone goes through when their identity has been completely hijacked.
In the end, I was lucky. This individual, one of four living in the same house, all of them in on the aforementioned "ring", managed only to get a few checks through, totaling a small amount of money. Of course, that fact alone is unnerving: it would seem he was sly about it. Rather than try to pass one check and make off with a huge amount of money, he cunningly wrote a series of small checks for every day things, banking on the possibility that I wouldn't notice.
And I didn't, a fact which is even more unnerving (and sort of embarrassing). I keep close tabs on my finances (or so I thought...), but in that one or two-week period when the bad ones were being written (late July/early August) I failed to notice them coming through amidst the flurry of other debits. And what's more, the situation was on the verge of getting much, much worse: the cops had, in their possession, one of my checks that had been written out for a significant amount of money, which the perp was apparently planning to try cashing somewhere.
Luckily for me, his house got raided before that could happen.
There's blame to go around. 97% of it goes to the criminals, as it always does, and should. I'll take about 2%, willingly man up to the carelessness and inattention to detail that allowed it to happen in the first place. To that end, needless to say, I have tightened up my game significantly.
But I reserve 1% of the blame for the inattentive dubs who accepted these checks at the places where the criminal wrote them. Consider two photocopies I recovered from the cops:
The only legitimate thing left visible on these checks is my printed name. The handwriting and the signature are not mine. Please, that is not even CLOSE to the way I make my 'J'! Nice try, loser...
But what jumps out at me (other than the unsettled feeling I get seeing someone else's attempt to sign my name...) isn't what was written to try passing the checks, but rather what someone wrote to verify them, the telephone and driver's license numbers that appear around my printed name. At first I was outraged, assuming it had to have been two harebrained workers, at two different businesses, who went through the rigmarole of asking to see a driver's licence, but failed to see it wasn't my license.
But now I'm thinking it was the perp who wrote those numbers, in an attempt to get out ahead of the situation, maybe so he could just hand the check over and nobody would bother to question. That handwriting looks the same on both checks, although, strangely, it doesn't appear to match the handwriting used to write out the amount. Nor do THOSE two handwriting samples appear to match on each! Man, come to think of it, the only visually consistent handwriting sample between both checks is my forged signature.
But in any case, the individuals who accepted these checks should have verified more thoroughly. Any check where personal information is hand-written is a red flag immediately, and in this case, the first digit of the driver's license number is 'S', not 'G'. I'm not sure how it is other places, but in the State of Wisconsin, the first digit of a driver's license number is always the first letter of one's last name. That would have, should have, stuck out for anyone maintaining even the dimmest candle flicker of vigilance.
I work in a similar business (one that makes the notion that I'd ever write a check to Domino's pretty laughable...;-), and we don't accept paper checks at all. Rarely we'll make an exception, usually for a large business, school, or church group, for a large order, but we always verify. Whoever physically hands us the check has to present their driver's license number, or some kind of picture ID.
Of course, the truly frightening part of all of this, is that there's really no security of any kind anymore, even with the new digital chip placed on credit and debit cards. As far as I can tell, that chip merely adds another step to the transaction. I don't see how it provides any added security. It helps cut down on fraud, makes tracking easier, supposedly, but there is still virtually no accountability for the use of any card in a retail business, with or without a chip, still no need for a signature if the transaction totals below $25, and a pin number is requested only about 25% of the time. To avoid the hassle of pecking out four numbers, most people choose to run their cards as credit, which I've never thought was a good idea.
If it were up to me, running a debit card as 'credit' so as to avoid the PIN number would simply not be an option. A pin number should always be required. I understand that makes the card MORE vulnerable to fraud in the event of a major security breach (like the nightmare at Target stores a few years back), but it makes it impossible for anyone to USE the card who isn't supposed to be using it. It's a tough choice, but I think it's far more important to have some accountability right at the point of purchase.
It would seem, short of living out in the woods with a coffee can of gold coins hidden under your bed and a 12-gauge to guard them, that we are all susceptible to identity theft these days, all potentially vulnerable to the strong undertow of our fast-rushing society, a society that wants it all, wants it now, and wants it convenient, a society that allows hundreds of millions of people, and tens of thousands of financial institutions and credit companies, to travel on, and be connected by, the same information superhighway all at once.
If you really sit and think about that, and think about the "bad guys" out there, in whatever form they take - the lazy individual heisting his way through life pizza by pizza, or the organized crime syndicate with means and intelligence at its disposal, which at this very moment - best believe - is working on something major, and intent on getting it right the first time - it should scare the hell out of you.
It does me, and I'm normally unflappable...except when it comes to spiders. ;)
