Wow... Another interesting weekend.

Apparently there is no shortage of people in the world that want to be just like Frosty...

Check that -- apparently there is no shortage of people in the world that want to BE Frosty...

One more time -- apparently there is no shortage of people in the world that want to share Frosty's bank account.

Now, you'd think that they could do better than raid the limited funds of some unassuming and responsible, yet impecunious graduate student.

Apparently they didn't get the memo:
I'm POOR!

Yes, I'm POOR! I'm a student, silly Identity Thief!

Upon surveying my bank account Saturday, I found four strange transactions that depleted my bank account by a total of $407.25.

Hmm.

Initially, it looked as if I was in a 7-Eleven store and the clerk managed to mistakenly charge me for a $10.20 purchase of one Gatorade, a pack of gum, an orange, an apple and three liters of water -- the necessities for the all-day softball extravaganza last weekend. After all, I did notice the guy having a hard time typing in the transaction amount, and I'm not positive he had a firm grip on the English language.

But, no. Nope. Not even the same 7-Eleven. The 7-Eleven where these transactions took place was actually about 10 miles away from where I made the real purchases in Evanston all the way down in the Loop -- an utter ghost town on Sunday early evening.

I headed down to the scene of the alleged crime (note the use of the word "alleged." Well, wait. We can go ahead and take "alleged" right out of this picture... just wait - you'll love this.)

I met up with Yohann, the lisping Egyptian store manager at around 10 a.m. on Saturday to review videotape of the incident. I called the always reliable Wells Fargo (what a joke, by the way), and gathered the exact times of each $100+ transaction so we could better reference the store video, and found that each transaction was within 5 minutes of each other... strange...

Yohann fired up the video camera, and we watched as some 45-year-old black man shuffled in and out of the store four times within twenty minutes to purchase two cartons of cigarettes, swiping a card, signing the screen and thanking the clerk...

THE SAME CLERK EACH TIME... You see something fishy here, Chach??? REALLY? NOTHING AT ALL??? HELLO! Yes, I guess this is why you're working at 7-Eleven for $5.85 an hour... jerk.

While I'm at it: You see something funny here, Wells Fargo? Yeah -- most people like me, with a string of $10 and under transactions occasionally manage to drop $407.25 at a 7-Eleven. What, did they think I started driving an 18-wheel rig for a living?

After Yohann and I determined that indeed, I was not a 45-year-old black man, we both realized that I was frauded... again... Yohann The Friendly Lisping Egyptian then let out a racial slur or two (being that he's Egyptian and not Black at all) and we called the police.

We filed a report and handed over the video tape and the bank transcripts, as well as the store's record of the purchases to the cop, who admitted that there's not much that can be done.

The good news is that Wells Fargo, for all of its obvious shortcomings, is going to reimburse me for all of the fraudulent transactions and send me a new card with a new number.

What's so disconcerting about the whole thing is this: The card was never out of my possession. In fact, it was in my wallet the entire time. I'm careful about destroying or saving all bank material, including receipts and my wallet is seldom not in my pocket. So, this guy HAD A REPLICATE CARD. Yeah, a card with my name and account information on it -- all the way down to the coded magnetic strip and the three-number Card ID number on the back... Scary.

The woman at the bank admitted that this type of thing is becoming increasingly common with the advent of the so-called "Paperless Society," and that she'd dealt with three similar disputes earlier that morning. Gulp.

She said that many of these Fraudsters work as servers in restaurants with a mini card slide in their pocket which records all of your card information on their way to the real card reader. Also, many ATMs are fraudulently outfitted with mini card readers placed by thieves, which record all card information from anyone who uses the machine. They later compile the information and make their own replicate cards.

What a kick in the seeds.

Morale of story --- remember to ALWAYS check your transactions. Had I not reviewed my financial information that morning, I would have been out $407.25 --- a healthy chunk of cash for anyone, let alone a POOR college student.

Bastards!

Maybe Tom DeLay should spend less time disputing what's going on in network television and focus on the ID Fraud that's sweeping the country.

Stupid Politics. Stupid Thieves.

Happy Memorial Day weekend. Apparently.