Financial Freak

While I was home visiting my family over the Thanksgiving Holidays, I discovered that someone had the routing numbers to my personal bank account. I had a charge for $39.95 show up on my personal account from a company called “MB XL Entertainment.” These folks are apparently in the porn industry from the searches I’ve read on the internet and from what I’ve seen in my reading, they’ve been very active the past month or so all over the southeastern US. I’m still trying to figure out how they got my information. I had to freeze my bank account until I got home.

Do you know how hard it is to freeze an account when you are away from home? It basically took an act of Congress to get the job done, but I promised the lady at the bank I’d come in as soon as I got home to take care of the Affidavit for Fraudulent activity – which I did this morning.

That was the easy part. The hard part was determining where I needed to file the police report. Was it in the town I used to live in because that’s where the check appeared to be from? “NOPE.” said the League City PD “You need to go to your current jurisdiction.” So off I went to the Houston Jurisdiction where I live. The gal behind the desk checked with an officer and told me “No, you need to go to the city where your bank is and file the report there.” So off to Friendswood I go and I wait – for an hour- for an officer to see me. He told me to go back to the Houston PD and talk with a supervisor. So that’s what I did – only I ended up talking to the police chief of my little burg in Houston.

It seems that they aren’t quite sure what to do with internet check fraud. See in Texas apparently, it isn’t a crime that you take someone’s check until you actually forge the check and use it. However, since there is no actual check with an ACH transaction, no one appears (at least in my area) to know what the heck to do and who you need to file a complaint with. I was really hacked off by the time I was done. I spent 4 hours today trying to get my complaint filed. I got my case number only because I pitched a hissy fit but I got it done. I set a fraud alert on my credit accounts as well.