In these days of a worsening economy there is bound to be more petty crime. We just had a call from Chase asking Ted if he had received his new business card. He has never applied for one. He has a Chase military card for use at the Tinker Club. Naturally all of the alarm bells went off in our heads. I had been a victim of credit card fraud some years ago and it took me forever to get it cleared up.
We were appalled. After an hour and a half on the phone with Chase, I was still unable to get this cleared up. The last resort was to put a fraud alert on Equifax which would be sent to the other credit bureaus.

We can't imagine how the perpetrator got the necessary information. All sensitive paper goes directly to the fireplace and is burned. I guess we must all be super-vigilant.

Stores that debit your checking account and then hand you back your check, as many of ours do are part of the problem of identity theft. I have been diligent about destroying those checks. Our bank employees constantly turn over and many of them are not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Unfortunately, I think we can see more of this kind of thing since necessities such as food and gasoline have gone through the roof. I read a very gloomy forecast in the paper yesterday. It predicted a very slow turn around in the economy.