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What did you do today?


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7 minutes ago, Jedigoat said:

If they can find out who did it, they could squeeze it out of them.  Especially with how much it was used.  

Here is the email from the detective:

Great, thanks!

Most of your unauthorized transactions occurred within a fairly isolated area of Englewood. Given the geography/short date range, and fact there are repeated transactions at several of the same locations, I highly suspect your card was circulated through the homeless population known to frequent this area.  It’s only a hunch, but I work a lot of these types of cases and don’t normally see such a concentrated pattern like this. 

If I am correct, each person seen on video using your card must be positively identified, and I MUST prove each person knowingly used the card without permission to gain a benefit.  In many previous check and credit card fraud cases I handled, I’ve heard just about every explanation a person can come up with. Unless someone outright confesses and says something like, “Yes, I knew I did not have permission to use the card, but I used it anyway to buy my groceries,” it’s nearly impossible to convince the District Attorney’s office to charge these cases. Also, face masks and poor-quality video footage can make identifying people a challenge, especially how frequently new faces come and go along this corridor. Unless a Police Officer recognizes someone on video from a prior contact, most of our homeless population only know one another by a nickname or moniker, and many aren’t willing to talk to police. If I were to find an individual who used your card and ask them about it, they’ll likely tell me they borrowed the card from [insert random nickname here] at one of the camps, who gave them permission to use the card to buy [insert random item here]. They either won’t know or won’t disclose this person’s true name, and they’ll say they didn’t look at the name on the card, or have knowledge the card was lost/stolen. Although I would still need to obtain positive identification and meet the same burden of proof if only one person used your card, I’m hoping that is exactly what happened.

At this point, I’ve submitted requests to Loaf N Jug, Walmart, Walgreens and Subway. I’ll also submit requests to 7-Eleven, Safeway, Ross and Office Depot, but I’m not going to hold my breath on these four. I likely won’t request video from the other identified locations, due to time and resource constraints or my inability to obtain video in previous cases.

Let me know when FirstBank reimburses your account, and I’ll do my best to keep you posted on my end. Please be mindful you are one of many cases assigned to me, and I cannot predict how soon I might have answers.

Feel free to call or email anytime.

Have a great day!

 

Anyhow---I never heard back...

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That sucks.  I had almost the opposite experience here when I lost a credit card.  About 6 years ago.  It was used about 7 or 8 times, the guy was identified and charged.  The detective basically said to the guy 'we know it's you, you're on video.  We're going to go after you for felony charges if you don't cooperate, blah blah'    The guy caved and was charged.  

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Well, the wallet turned up this morning. A good Samaritan was kind enough to bring it to the house. She said she found it lying in the grass by the social security office a few blocks away. I was not over there yesterday, so that means I dropped it on my street, and someone picked it up, stole the cash (it was missing), and then tossed it in the grass. Not surprising since nobody on my street has any honor anymore.

Still, I'm glad it's back. Nothing else was missing.

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Police usually aren't keen on these sorts of crime because there's a lot of work for very little payoff. Most people who perpetrate these sorts of crimes get minimal sentences at most; usually they only receive probation, unless they're repeat offenders. Basically cops feel like it's more trouble than it's worth. Source: my cousin who is a detective. 

Aside, and true story: some years ago, dudes kicked in the door to our house while we were at work, trashed the place, and took all kinds of stuff, including smashing a piggy bank in my infant daughter's room and knocking everything off her shelves.  The only reason one of the guys ended up serving any time was because I tracked down the stuff in a local pawn shop and called the police to tell them where they could go to view the video of the transaction (also, the dumb shit used his real ID at the pawn shop), and it just so happened that the dude had gotten out of jail the day before he broke into our house. He got six months as a repeat offender, and I got a stern talking-to from a police officer about my "potentially harassing behavior." (Also about two years later, one of the detectives involved in the case was arrested for all sorts of shenanigans. One of the major things he was convicted for was taking items, including much of the property stolen from my home, from evidence and reselling them.)

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2 hours ago, Tank said:

If somebody is using a card that doesn't have their name on it don't they know it's stolen?

Not necessarily. It could be borrowed with permission. 

But how anyone can honestly think that our police departments and criminal justice system don't need serious reform is beyond me. Defunding them will only go so far. 

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2 hours ago, Tank said:

If somebody is using a card that doesn't have their name on it don't they know it's stolen?

As someone who has worked for credit card companies, yes this can happen.  Someone can be added to an account as an authorized user, and not be financially responsible.  This is usually family members, spouses, or significant others.  THe merchant is supposed to check, and in some cases they can call the credit card company to call the account owner. But in practice, this is often not done. It is only as good as the store in question. In more recent years, credit card companies have algorithms that flag a point of sale, if it is outside that card member's normal purchasing habits, and temporarily suspends the card.  But if it is someone in your area, and they happen to go to the same stores or similar stores you do, it is harder to catch. 

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11 hours ago, Darth Krawlie said:

Authorized users often have a card in their own name, though, the charges just go on the master account.

This is true and usually the case, but depending on the credit card company, authorized users can also use the card member's card.  

Honestly, all credit cards should also require a pin to use it like debit cards.  

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13 hours ago, Cerina said:

Not necessarily. It could be borrowed with permission. 

But how anyone can honestly think that our police departments and criminal justice system don't need serious reform is beyond me. Defunding them will only go so far. 

Between this and the other thing I am going through, I have learned a lot about the criminal justice system.  Basically, if I was wealthier, I would get access to my issues being addressed. 

 

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Our garage door opener has been acting pretty wacko for the past month or so. It would just randomly not want to open, so I'd open the release, slide the garage door open, close the release and slam it shut. The jarring motion would get it back to running for a week or so, before I had to use the same trick. Well, yesterday that didn't work, so I bought a new Craftsman garage door opener from Lowes.

The other one was a craftsman and it was about 16 years old. Still, I could use the old chain and brackets, without having to install new ones. I also kept the old sensors in, because I thought they would work with the new garage door opener. So, I programmed the remotes and the distance for the opener to open and close the garage. Everything seemed to be working fine, until I pushed the button to close the garage door. The light blinked 10 times, telling me that the beams were out of alignment, even though they were both lit up and responding to my passing between them. It was starting to get dark, so I manually closed the garage and am so looking forward to replacing the sensors. Ugh!

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Yeah, as I was reading I was thinking that it’s probably the sensors, or more likely the wiring to the sensors.  I need to replace all of my wiring.

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2 hours ago, Fozzie said:

Yeah, as I was reading I was thinking that it’s probably the sensors, or more likely the wiring to the sensors.  I need to replace all of my wiring.

It's not the wiring; I do that kind of stuff for a living. The sensors are pretty much like a switch, with the beams making contact being a closed circuit, while when you break the beam it becomes an open circuit. I'm going to swap out the sensors anyways, because maybe there is something else about the old ones that the new garage door opener doesn't like.

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17 minutes ago, Gamevet said:

It's not the wiring; I do that kind of stuff for a living. The sensors are pretty much like a switch, with the beams making contact being a closed circuit, while when you break the beam it becomes an open circuit. I'm going to swap out the sensors anyways, because maybe there is something else about the old ones that the new garage door opener doesn't like.

Ah. My problem is similar, but I’ve tracked it down to the wiring. There’s a short in the wires leading to the sensors. So they’ll work sometimes, but other times not.

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1 hour ago, Fozzie said:

Ah. My problem is similar, but I’ve tracked it down to the wiring. There’s a short in the wires leading to the sensors. So they’ll work sometimes, but other times not.

The lights stay solid, until I break the light beam. I could easily put a wire toner on there to prove that both conductors are sending signal, while a short would kill that toner signal. I think that it's pretty much the Garage Door Opener being finicky with the old sensors.  I plan on removing the old sensors, splicing them into the existing cable feed, to see if they react the same. It they do, I'll just do a home run to the Garage Door Opener.

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21 hours ago, Fozzie said:

Ah. My problem is similar, but I’ve tracked it down to the wiring. There’s a short in the wires leading to the sensors. So they’ll work sometimes, but other times not.

It was the sensors. I replaced the sensors and the garage door opener still blinked. I ran cables from the sensors across the garage floor and directly into the device and it still didn't like it. I tweaked the aim of the sensor on the left side of the garage and it fixed the problem. I connected it back to the old wires and everything is working again. 

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Started cleaning up my office/library for the new semester that started on Tuesday. I pulled all of Noah's lit for the semester and put it on its own shelf for him to grab them easily (because for some reason my 12.5 year-old seems to have a real hard time with my organization system...alphabetical by author's last name...:rolleyes:). 

Since I was going to be up and moving around, I decided to throw on the ol' YouTube Millennial Mixtape mix. And for real, it's the best workout. According to my fancy new-to-me Fitbit, I completed all of my activity goals for the day in about 40 minutes of pretending I'm a 20-something in an early 2000s nightclub. (I'm going to hurt like hell tomorrow. Let it be known that I can no longer drop it like it's hot. :no:)

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