WE'VE BEEN ROBBED! For those of you that have never had that experience we are so thankful for you. For those of you that have we share your frustration and anger.
I have decided that I will not become a passive victim, so have decided to share my story and information with as many people as possible. Hopefully helping someone in the future who may become a victim.
On Friday morning April 12, 2002 someone came into our wheat field in broad daylight, at the top of a hill and got into my husbands pickup. Stealing a camera, binoculars, digital meter, generator and three check books. We assumed they carried this out on foot, as there were no tire tracks to be found. The pickup was not setting along a busy highway or even along the gravel road leading to the field. It was parked in a place that was not visible from the road out in the field. My husband had been working there all day but had to make a quick run to town for seed wheat, taking his Rotewiller dog with him. Otherwise the dog would have been at the pickup while he worked in the field.
On discovering these things missing that evening at quitting time my husband called in the police and the long process began. The police took a report and then the next morning I got a call from a merchant in Walla Walla asking me if my husband had bought gas the night before. I told him no that the checks were stolen. The business owners employee had become suspicious of the man, when he left when asked for ID, leaving the check and other items on the counter after filling up with gas. The owner then called me after pulling the check the next day when his employee told him of the situation. Our local police informed the Walla Walla police of the situation and they interviewed the employee and obtained the videotape from the stores security video camera. From that tape the police were able to get pictures printed of the thief. Meanwhile I was busy shutting down bank accounts and reopening new accounts after calling check-scanning numbers I received from the bank. The company called Scan provides a scanning service to the merchants who subscribe to it. This service allows the sales clerks to scan a check to see if it is good. After the victim calls the Scan Company and gives them the information about the checks that were stolen that information is put into the system and is updated every 12 hours. Anyone using that system should be able to pick up that the check is stolen and it will alert the sales clerk. The problem with that is there is more than one scan company out there and it took me awhile to find the other numbers. I will share that information with you later in this letter. There are also many stores that do not have a scan system at all. I found that a lot of the gas stations I talked to did not subscribe to a check-scanning program. The thieves are also good at knowing which store are lax at scanning and which do not scan at all so they stay with those establishments to pass their bad check. Deciding to be active on this situation I took the time to call some of the stores that were lax at scanning and all of the gas stations in the Walla Walla area. The reason I knew what stores were lax was because I had gotten on the Internet and searched on the words "stolen checks" and came across a college professor who had written an article on his web page about his son's experience. In the article he rated all of the stores by the way the merchant handled this problem of a forged check.
As I stated earlier I had gotten telephone numbers of businesses that are designed to help with lost or stolen checks. I called those numbers to see what they had to offer or say. Here is my experience from the numbers. The first number was Scan and I had to get that number from my banker. This number is one your banker has to call and then they gave me a 1-800 number that I talked to them personally and gave them my checking information that they put in the system for check scans at the stores. I was able to get this in the system on a weekend, as my bank was wonderful about going in on their day off and doing this for me. Otherwise I would have had to wait until Monday. The next number I called was TeleCheck at 1-800-710-9898.This was another check scanning business. They were excellent at taking my account numbers and putting it in their scan system. I asked her if they integrated with other systems and she said no they did not. This was when I realized that I needed to call more than one scanning company to cover the most businesses that I could. The next number I called was Cross Check 1-707-586-0551. The person I talked to there explained that to her knowledge this company was more of a check guarantee for the business and they could not block bad checks. They just guaranteed the business that they would get paid for the bad check. . The last number I called was National Check Fraud Service at 1-843-571-2143. There I got a man by the name of Charles Bruce who gave me lots of wonderful information, e-mailed me a ten page document of guideline to follow if you are a victim. He also gave me the name of the web site to go to for all of this information. www.ckfraud.org.
Contributed by penner@innw.net, Spring, 2002.
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This page most recently revised on 13. May 2002.