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SOMEBODY ELSE IS TAKING MY PLACE |
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I’ve used this space to write about myself as a cop and about other cops, but I’ve never written about myself as a victim. But it’s happened and I’m not taking it very well. It seems somebody got ahold of my ID and used it to bilk two banks for payments to organizations that I had supposedly joined and to whom I owed money. The total involved so far is about $1,450, of which I’ve actually only lost $700, since I caught the other overcharges and had them cancelled by the bank before I paid them. What I didn’t do is go back in my records to see if I had had other visits from these swindlers, instead of dismissing the incidents as one-time things or maybe even honest mistakes. When I did go back I found that the gang had been milking my accounts since 2003, each year extracting a membership fee totaling $700 in the end.
I suppose it was an honor to belong to the automobile clubs or whatever they had me enrolled in, but it was one I could do without. I could also do without the negligence of the banks who issued my cards and never picked up on these racketeers. They weren’t a secret; I just went to a website that crusades against them and found hundreds of complaints on record from all over the country denouncing the racketeers for criminal impersonation, false promises of reimbursement, and delaying tactics calculated to wear out the victims and stifle their complaints.
That’s what I gather from the websites. At the same time it seems possible that different tactics might be used, i.e., satisfy me if I complain and thereby prevent trouble that might interfere with the racket and wake up thousands of victims who’ve never caught on to it. There hasn’t been any sign of this in their dealings with my fellow suckers though, so instead of subjecting myself to the wiseguys’ stonewall tactics, I’ll be going to the banks and asking them what they thought they were doing when they accepted forged evidence that I had joined a non-existent automobile club and wanted the bank to pay it money out of my credit card account.
That should be enough to back them into a corner and make them disgorge. I learned one thing working for a bank. When a bank cashes a forged check it is responsible for the money lost by the forger’s victim. The only way out is for the bank to deny the forgery and claim the signature was good. Sometimes this works; sometimes it’s actually true. I don’t know the percentages, but I do know that really good forgers are few and far between, so I give myself a good chance of proving my claim. This assumes there’ll be resistance from the banks. On the bright side, it assumes that recovery of my losses in 2005, 2004 and 2003 isn’t ruled out by the statute of limitations.
My advice to readers is that they should study their credit card statements closely and challenge any charges they don’t understand. Apparently the first reaction of victims finding such charges is to call the outfit that imposed them and demand restitution. This is frequently promised but rarely delivered. The auto club isn’t in the business of paying out money to anybody. You’re better off dealing with the bank that issued the card.
Banks are responsible organizations which do make restitution for losses caused by them. When they have to. They want proof, as I’ve pointed out. In the case of disreputable outfits that have compiled a record of chiseling and cheating, the question is, what are the banks thinking of when they continue to do business with them? TLG in a company’s name should be a sure tipoff to them. But they continue honoring the charges made on credit cards for the purpose of paying TLG for its “services”. This is bank negligence and it’s the reason I think I’ll make good my losses even though they go back three years. If I don’t, well I’ll have had a good lesson for which I’ll be truly grateful. Q.E.D.
Besides looking for the initials T L G, it pays to take note of their place of origin. Connecticut is the state most of these scams are coming from. Connecticut has lots of banks and insurance companies which issue credit cards around the country. The employees of these issuers are the most probable source of information to be used by the scam artists. Here we have more bank negligence, if you should encounter resistance when making a claim and want to intimidate the banker who’s holding back your rightful restitution. It might be enough to make him squirm and reconsider his shortsighted approach. I’ll find out for myself, I think, if I get accused of negligence about my payments in past years and I want to give my accuser some of his own medicine. “So I should have checked my statements better, huh? What about you? Your own employees are the ones feeding information to the mob so they can rip off your cardholders. I’m going to the White House with this!”
No one normally thinks of Connecticut as a mobbed-up state, but every once in a while there’s a roundup up there and another million-dollar betting ring is broken up. This is executive-type crime, befitting Connecticut, one of our classier states. It has its wild side, though. We can’t forget that the last governor went to jail. What a mortification. The state of Yale and Darien and Greenwich and all those country clubs had sunk to the level of…New Jersey.
I hope I haven’t seemed to be whining here about my victimization by the Connecticut mob. I freely admit I brought it on myself by neglect of my monthly statements. In my banking years I saw plenty of times how people got hurt by this kind of neglect. One case was that of a retired fireman who found out his account had been subjected to withdrawals of thousands of dollars made without his knowledge. The culprit was quickly identified on our videotape. It was his daughter. What’s the matter with you guys? he said. How did you let her do this? The account was in his name only and he had never given her any kind of permission slip to show the bank. That’s right, we said, we’ve got to admit we were negligent. We owe you $24,0000. We have to tell you, though, that we’ll have to arrest your daughter and charge her with the theft of this money. We have to make a crime report to the FDIC and we have to show them what we did about the crime. If we do nothing, we’re in violation of their Rules and Regulations and we’ll be heavily fined.
Suppose I waive restitution of the $24,000? Oh, then we’ll have no crime to report and also no loss from it. You think that’s better, huh? Yeah, we do too. | |