Jan 9, 2024 4 min read

By Nick Jacobs

My daily routine is to check my newspapers, magazines, social media, and my regular bank account. I’ve never missed even one day.

Recently, I decided to venture into the wild and look at the only other account that I have, a business account that, except for a few donations and subscription purchases, has been relatively inactive since 2020, kinda like a sloth on vacation.

​Something jumped out at me. It was a purchase for $27.85 from a company called Champion Jewel. It was kind of like someone showing up at a party I wasn’t even having. I knew I hadn’t ever purchased anything from any jewelry stores on this company card.

​When I began to explore this charge, I saw another charge to a Megastore Supp the previous month for $27.85. Then there was another one the month before to VIP Internet.

Every month, $27.85 had been deducted from this account and attributed to different obscure companies like Rubix Apparel, Viral Product, Supreme Intern, and Paramount Online.

Because I hardly ever checked, I hadn’t noticed this pattern. I’m sure if I had, I might have thought something like, “Oh, that was the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap I bought.” But this was like my money was playing a game of hide-and-seek without telling me.

​The really bad news is that this has been going on since May 2020.

​Let me be honest. I’m still working part-time, and not dependent upon the $107 monthly retirement check I get for 10 years of teaching. This didn’t deprive me of food or medicine. It’s just the concept of being defrauded for that long without any alarms going off that is troubling.

​When I typed in one of the company names, a fraud alert came up. Why could I find that on one Google search, but the fraud division couldn’t? These companies all had California addresses, and each had a phone number that, when called, the operator on the other end simply tried to get more personal information from me. He said they were a clearing house for several companies, and he couldn’t find any record of my charges.

​Look, I know it’s my fault for not tracking or even closing this account, but I am curious as to how this all works.

​When I contacted the credit card company, the recorded message said, “Call your local bank.” When I stopped at the bank, they canceled the card and asked me to sign the 60-day fraud claim. I never realized fraud came with an expiration date.

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The problem was that I hadn’t found it in nearly 50 months. If you’re doing the math, that’s $1225.40. So, minus the 60-day fraud coverage the bank offers, someone got about $1169.70.

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Yeah, that wasn’t as bad as the insurance company that stole one-fourth of my retirement account (That CEO did go to prison for a few months). But nearly $1,200 is significant to almost everyone.

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To the bank’s credit, I’ve regularly gotten fraud calls on big purchases, like the washer and dryer someone tried to buy in Spain under my account, but what’s the cutoff? I figure if thieves can come up with algorithms that siphon money, the fraud protection companies should be able to come up with similar algorithms to flag them, but algorithms were never my forte.

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All I can think about are my friends trying to live on retirement checks of $50 a month plus Social Security, and it made me both sad and mad because that money could have fed three starving kids for a year.

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Lesson learned. Check your accounts because you never know when they might be moonlighting as supporters of some fraudsters.

Nick Jacobs is a Windber resident.