Credit card fraud

We were in Spain for three weeks in April and May ’04. We kept all of our receipts for credit card purchases and when our bill came we verified that the correct amounts had been posted.

In early June I went online to our MasterCard account to check whether a totally unrelated purchase had posted and was alarmed to discover that there were three fraudulent charges from Spain totaling $500. I immediately called the fraud department of the card issuer and was told that an actual card had been run through the card swiper in making the purchases.

Since we both have our credit cards, it is obvious that someone (probably in a restaurant) managed to steal all of the information from one of our cards in order to replicate it.

The fraud department said that this card had been presented an additional nine times, but MasterCard had refused the authorization, sensing that fraudulent activity was taking place. They had informed the merchants that they needed to call MasterCard to get authorization. None of them had called. The account is now, obviously, closed.

MARIAN DOWNS
Lakewood, CO