Close Call
I’d just put down the phone from dealing with a grad student when my secretary phoned. She urgently advised me to call our commercial credit card service pronto — a fraud alert had been issued on my account.
I dug out the rarely used card and found their number on the back. Within minutes, I was talking with a representative who confirmed that there were a sudden rash of large charges on my travel account which hadn’t been used since July (and then only for travel costs of a research trip). Thankfully, I’m liable for none of them, although I’ll have to go through some paperwork rigmarole with the bank in order to confirm that.
Checking back in with the secretary, what’s maddening to hear is that I’m far from the first at our institution to be hit this way (something which the charge card rep had implied). From what we could glean, it seems to be a fault in the system of issuing these corporate cards. In our case, the cards for all the travel accounts were numbered sequentially meaning if one was compromised, the thieves could simply move up and down the numbering system. There were several such frauds reported during the summer. I’ve had this particular card for more than a year.
Even a historian can do the math to figure out that this was a crime waiting to happen.
I’m fortunate. I’m getting a new corporate card within the week (not that I desperately need it right now — no travel plans in the immediate future) and the bank has been all that you could want. But the boneheaded stupidity of not cancelling and reissuing all the other cards has me steaming!