It Helps to Eat Indian Food with Nice People After Someone Steals All Your Money

This morning when I checked my email, I learned from Grand-mère that someone had captured her debit card and pin number while she was the UK, and that person or persons had made three withdrawals from her bank account. Her bank had caught the irregular activity and she was in the midst of filling out paperwork to reclaim her stolen funds.

Oh no! I thought. Then I checked our bank account online, even though I had just looked at it the previous evening and all had been in order.

Three fraudulent cash withdrawals, from an ATM in London.

[Insert colorful expletive here.]

I remember the time that Grand-mère and I both took out cash from the same ATM. It was about two weeks ago. It was a busy ATM at Churchill Square. I had used it successfully once before and so didn’t think anything of returning. I don’t remember anyone peering over our shoulders. We each still have our debit cards. How did the thieves get the pins? How did they get the card numbers?

Before you use an ATM again, read this article on debit card fraud from Snopes:

http://www.snopes.com/fraud/atm/atmcamera.asp

I don’t remember anything out of the ordinary about the card reader, but I do remember that I had a difficult time reading the screen when I was making my transaction. Perhaps the machine had been altered somehow to capture card numbers. Perhaps there was a camera somewhere or on someone that videoed my keystrokes. Who knows. What I do know is that this form of electronic pick-pocketing has gotten quite sophisticated. The thieves gained access to our account and we probably never even saw them.

And the worst part? We discovered this about 8AM GMT but our bank’s customer service line would not be open until 7AM ET. That means we had to wait four hours (until noon GMT) to call our bank and notify them of the fraud. And in those four hours we watched the thieves completely empty our account.

[Insert a different, equally colorful expletive here.]

We do have complete fraud protection from our bank and once they complete their investigation they will refund our money. But in the meantime it’s been a huge hassle. Our debit cards have been canceled and now we ourselves have no easy access to cash. We’re lucky, I suppose, that it’s our last week in Brighton.

On the whole I’m not feeling very kind towards humanity today.

But then the sun poked a hole through the gloomy clouds that smothered Brighton today. Sam and I were invited to a farewell lunch with AC’s colleagues. As Sam later remarked, “It was a lovely lunch.” Fourteen or so office mates plus me and Sam round a table at a swanky Indian restaurant. Delicious food, wine, and Christmas crackers cracking all around. Everyone wore paper crowns. Sam got to keep a bunch of the little cracker toys, and she was generally treated like a princess. AC’s office mates are funny, quirky, and kind. I know that AC will miss the camaraderie of this little group. We were both touched that they organized this little get-together.

It was a useful reminder that not all of humanity is rotten.