The Case of the Fraudulent Charges‏

This morning as I was driving in to work, I stopped at Murphy Oil at Wal-Mart on South Parkway to fill my car up with some very expensive gas. I mean, really, these gas prices are getting out of control. I'm very thankful to have no car payment and a vehicle that gets really good gs mileage in times like these, even if I do have to use duct tape to keep it going.

I have a Wal-Mart Discover Card that I use to buy gas because some genius (and I'm not saying that sarcastically) decided to offer five cents off per gallon at Murphy Oil when you use your Wal-Mart Discover card. The only time I use this card is to buy gas and I pay it off each month. (Side note: for the last three months of 2011 it was 10 cents off per gallon -wish those days would come back!)

Anyway, I filled up my car to the tune of around $55 and then headed on in to work.Once I got to work, I went about my business and when I had a break I checked my Discover statement and made sure I had my next payment set up and what the balance was and all that sort of thing.

After lunch I noticed I had a missed call and voice mail on my phone. I didn't think much of it because I get a lot of calls from political campaigns these days and I figured it was some other person trying to win my vote. Thankfully, I decided to listen to the voice mail just in case it was Publisher Clearing House. I'm sad to say it was not Publisher's Clearing House that called, but instead it was the folks at Wal-Mart Discover calling about potential fraudulent charges on the very card I had used that morning. So, I immediately called them back.

I first had to go through one of those dreadful automated systems which told me that there was a suspicious charge of $308.04 and did I make that charge. Um, no I sure didn't; and so I was connected with Omar (not kidding). Omar told me there was another charge for $9.98 - didn't make that one either - at a convenience store and then the charge for $308.04 was for some discount store that I had never even heard of before. Omar said he was going to cancel my card and send me a new one and that I would also be receiving a statement regarding the disputed charges which had been taken off of my card.

Here's the thing, my card never left my possession and has never left my possession. I don't use it to make online purchases or any other purchases for that matter. The only time I use it, as already stated, is when I purchase gas. So, apparently, from what I can figure is there was some sneaky person at the gas station with some sort of electronic card reader. I've seen it on Dateline NBC before and you may have as well. Either that or the clerk working at the gas station was able to retrieve the card number from my transaction. I don't have a clue as to how it happened, but clearly it happened this morning while I was purchasing gas.

So, be careful out there, people! If you are anything like me then you probably check your credit card statements and bank statements on a weekly basis and will quickly discover if someone has somehow made a fraudulent charge on your account. I'm just grateful that my card company noticed the suspicious charge and gave me a call about it. That's good business practice indeed!