I thought I knew what was done, but it’s far more sophisticated. Stolen CC is used to order expensive goods online through less-than trustworthy US merchants and shipped to a deceived 3rd party in the US who is deceived into shipping the goods to Africa (Benin west of Nigeria) and sold on the street for any amount since $0 was paid for it.
Pretty incredible!

Fortunately, I didn’t have any pre-authorized bill payments on the canceled card. It would have been a real hassle having to call every utility to make new arrangements.

PC bank called us the next day to validate some huge withdrawals from our bank account. The withdrawals were unsuccessful and the card was canceled.

Until the banks use Smart Card Technology we’ll no longer use self service machines. They’re just too risky.

By the way, they don’t always catch these unauthorized charges, I once had my card fraudulently charged in Zimbabwe, Paris, NY, etc all in the same month over a few weeks and it took me receiving my monthly statement and calling VISA to report the fraudulent charges before the card was cancelled.

So, one method I’ve employed to detect fraudulent activity is to call up my credit card and move my credit limit LOWER to the point where I’m unlikely spend that much on a monthly basis. If I do need to make an unusually large transaction, I pick up my cell phone and call them to raise the credit limit to where I need it to be. After the transaction goes through and is paid up, then I call again to lower my credit limit back down to my usual spending level.

In that way, the most that a fraudster may potentially get out of my card in the future would be one maybe two thousand dollars before they’re detected (by hitting the limit on the card), depending upon when they decide to strike.

Anyways, I thought that might be a useful tip to your other readers!

“Shred all your receipts and bills that you are throwing away.” Absolutely…

Thank you for sharing a helpful information.

Banks have option to reduce card, cheque, mail order and identity fraud to VIRTUALLY ZERO permanently simply by implementing ID KEY system described on website http://www.xwave.co.uk

Fake documents have made signature system unreliable but ID stickers will enable us to personalise them like passports to make these signatures reliable again.

Skimmers and pin-hole cameras have made ATM transactions unreliable but use of Card Key Code stored on ID KEY to activate ATMs will make ATM transactions reliable again. This system will make use of stolen and skimmed cards meaningless.

This shows that if banks implement ID KEY system we will not have to prosecute organisations for failing to protect our personal and card details since these details will not get misused.