A Villager whose 83-year-old husband appears to be the victim of large-scale credit card fraud called a Marion County sheriff’s deputy for help on Monday.
When the deputy arrived at the residence in the 16800 block of Cuthbert Circle, in the Village of Woodbury, the 75-year-old woman told him that she believed someone had gained access to her husband’s personal information. She said he recently had ordered new American Express cards because his original card only had his first initial on it and he needed his full name displayed so he could use the card while traveling outside the United States.
The woman said the new cards were ordered sometime between Sept. 14-18 and on Thursday, Sept. 19, she received an email from American Express confirming the new cards were to be sent to an alternate address – a request neither she nor her husband had made.
The woman she spoke with a representative of American Express who wouldn’t give her the alternate address that was on file. But the representative said the company had received a call from the couple’s home phone number requesting the change. The woman said she immediately canceled the request and the new cards were sent to her home address, a sheriff’s office report states.
The following day, the woman said another email came from American Express confirming the email address associated with their account had been changed. She said she called the credit company a second time and canceled that bogus request as well.
The woman added that on Sept. 19, her husband also received a call from Mastercard inquiring about a possible fraudulent charge. She said the credit card company’s representative wouldn’t state where the charge was made or how much it was for, but it was stopped and the money was returned to her husband’s account.
Also on Sept. 19, the woman said, her husband received a Chase Sapphire credit card in the mail in with his name on it and a $23,000 credit limit. She said he hadn’t applied for the card, so they contacted Chase, canceled the account and shredded the card, the report says.
The woman said another strange incident happened on Sept. 19 when she was attempting to get the credit card situations resolved. She said she tried to use her home phone and noticed there was no dial tone, so she called her provider, Comcast, to troubleshoot the issue.
The woman said she was told that someone had called Comcast from her home phone number and requested the line be removed from the account and the number transferred to another phone company. She said she didn’t authorize that change and Comcast then issued her a new phone number.
The woman told the deputy that she’d already filed a report with the Federal Trade Commission over the unauthorized changes to her husband’s accounts. She said they also have signed up with a credit monitoring company. And she added that she just wanted to make the sheriff’s office was aware of the issues in case any other unauthorized transactions show up and she needs to call for help in the future.