I guess the Louisiana State Police are part of the troll...
This memo is from webpage:
Actually, my title is not misleading.
It is Wal-Mart employees that are part of the theft ring...
Posted on 10/07/2007 8:34:16 PM PDT by topher
It’s a rare store that asks to see my signature on the back of my card, OR for a picture ID.
So I think almost any store I go to will allow a person to use a stolen credit card.
The credit companies seem not to care, and accept the cost of bad transactions as part of their business. Of course if you don’t catch it on your monthly statement, YOU get to pay for it.
You could try only buying at stores that ask for ID and check your signature, but you won’t get to shop at very many stores any more.
And you could force the cashier to check your id, but that won’t really help.
I’m not a big fan of the new “electronic check” legislation, that allows checks to be scanned and sent like real checks. At LEAST, I wish the system included the check number so the bank would detect replicated checks.
But again, if you catch the error on your monthly statement, you won’t be out any money, and if your bank wants to eat the cost of fraud as part of their business, that’s their choice.
You could use cash for everything, then nobody could trace you and nobody could defraud you. They could rob you of course.
And if you lose your cash, unlike your credit card you can’t cancel it, nor will anybody reimburse you if someone finds it and starts spending it.
He confirmed that all of the checks cashed against his and his wife's account were made by Wal-Mart/Sam's.
If you read some of the other replies, you will see that Wal-Mart uses a different means of cashing checks. They treat them as DEBIT transactions...
The person claimed that he said that Wal-Mart did not check ID...
There was one person in this thread who claims that Wal-Mart now VOIDS the check and processes as a DEBIT transaction.
Someone else on this thread claims that they were the victims of CREDIT THEFT, and that because Wal-Mart uses Debit type transactions for Checks, it takes three days to find problems with such transactions...
The couple has gotten all of the money back, and maybe it was the bank that had to re-imburse the money (versus Wal-Mart).
Basically, you have the trouble of having to go to your bank and then to the police and spend the time to do this to straighten out the issues.
They did have one choice -- whether or not to prosecute the person/persons using the checking account fraudulently.
There are posters on this thread that Wal-Mart does things differently than other stores -- they treat a check as a DEBIT transaction.
One person learned this because they were the victim of Identity Theft. Another person on this thread claims that a person they know says that Wal-Mart now processes a Check as a "Voided Check" and then processes as a DEBIT transaction.
A Debit Card transaction requires a PIN plus the card itself may have special encoding to prevent fraud (I am only guessing here).
If I am wrong, so be it, but it appears Wal-Mart is doing something different -- checks as DEBIT transactions -- which may be the mechanism that facilitates this type of scam...
Re ZIPs at gas stations - every station I have used in greater Houston area asks for it and must match one on billing. Put in office zip one time in error and it wouldn’t let me use pump w/o talking to mgr.
After writing that, I went to the local K-Mart and they had me enter a zip code as well. But the Lowes didn’t, so it may be spreading slowly in our area.
I guess the Louisiana State Police are part of the troll...
This memo is from webpage:
Actually, my title is not misleading.
It is Wal-Mart employees that are part of the theft ring...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1908003/posts?page=32#32
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1908003/posts?page=46#46
There is a memo out by the Louisiana State Police on this.
Apparently, Wal-Mart employees are using cell phones to photograph the checks. So the memo is dated July 26, 2007, but this just recently happened to someone in South Louisiana (705xx zip code)...
So there is some other information on this scam on the web, and it is older information.
The memo starts out by saying:
Do not cash checks at Wal-Mart
The website says that it was not an authorized memo, but that it was being circulated internally in the State Government of Louisiana.
It is unclear if it was a semi-official memo or more of a bogus memo. In other words, the memo may be based on fact, or may be a lie fabricated by someone in the government (perhaps as a joke).
I guess the real problem is that Wal-Mart appears to use checks as EFT transactions and not as checks... At least according to the information in this website...
And it goes on to say that one should use credit cards or debit cards in lieu of checks for this reason.
My apologies...
In this era of identity theft, anyone still giving paper checks to someone they don’t trust needs to have their head examined.
The only checks I write are to my landlord. Even the government usually takes plastic these days - and debit/check cards work just fine if you don’t want to deal with debt on credit cards. And you can still keep track of your expenditures in your checkbook register.
Every day on the police blotter someone is using a stolen credit card at wal-mart. It is quite a problem with them.
I shop at numerous different places and NO ONE ever asks to verify my signature or to see my ID. This isn't a Wal-Mart problem, it's a problem in general.
But Wal-Mart bashers will never concede that fact.
This sounds like a work of fiction.
I’m not a basher of Wal-mart,just giving the facts. Wal-mart is on the blotter every-day.
Hm.. could it possibly be because there are Walmarts everywhere, and that it is a popular place for all to shop? Hm???
Nah, that couldn’t be it. [/sarcasm]
It seems to be the most popular place for people to go when they have a stolen credit card. Maybe it’s because of the large amounts you can rack-up and the large crowds make it easier to be somewhat anonymous. (Even though there are cameras everywhere).
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