Filed under: Financial Housekeeping, Fraud | Tags: Alert, Check, Fraud, MB EL Entertainment, Police
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.
Filed under: Financial Housekeeping
One of my goals this year is to get my debt paid down. Today I did the following for my financial health:
1) I figured out a rough initial estimate of how much $$$ I need for gas, food, and miscellaneous expenses from the 15th to the 31st and set up an envelope system for it. The envelopes I will carry with me are Food & Sundries, Gas, Entertainment, and Miscellaneous. As I shop, I’ll pull money out of the appropriate envelope and put a corresponding receipt into the envelope. When I get home, any receipts in the Miscellaneous Envelope are classified and moved to the appropriate category. My goal is that by Feb. 15th, I’ll be able to get a little more specific with my budget and make the appropriate adjustments.
2) I paid off 3 minor bills. One of them was the last utility bill for the old apartment and I should be getting a deposit back on that. I marked the date on the calendar that I need to check with the utility company to if I don’t have my deposit back by then.
3) Updated my ING account information and my Sharebuilder information. And also wrote down my account information.
4) Paid a payment on one other bill.
5) Went through my godaddy.com account and made some decisions about how I am going to manage some of the domains I have.
6) Moved the left over money from last pay period and my 10% for this pay period into my other checking account. Once the transfer has cleared. the bulk of the $$ in that account will be moved to my ING account.
Debt Goal for the Year: $15000
Total Debt Paid tonight: $402.64
$14597.36 to go!
