Thursday, February 28, 2008

Flu, Fraud, and a little bit of Freud

Today I was home sick, sleeping most of the time, though somehow able to watch many, many episodes of In Treatment on HBO. That show is surprisingly addictive and, because it's about therapy, makes me feel like I'm learning. So Rob will come home after I've been watching it and I'll be like "I've observed these patterns in the way you react to me leaving my clothes all over the floor" or "How do you feel about the fact that you forgot to feed the cats?" He usually rolls his eyes at Smokey and then the two of them go off and talk about me.

But not today. Because Rob was skiing in Vermont while I was at home on the couch, finding out from my bank that someone has been withdrawing thousands of dollars from my account over the past three days. And, by the way? My account doesn't have thousands of dollars in it. So between that, and the fact that my ATM card is safely in my wallet, I have a really hard time figuring out what happened here.

The woman I spoke to at Citibank made me take a quiz in order to begin their "criminal investigation." Seriously, it was multiple choice and there is just nothing better than being on the phone with your bank when you are sick, hearing that you have no money while you answer questions like the following:

"Based on the past 5 years of your living arrangements, when I say Laguna, what location do you associate that with? A) Honolulu B) San Francisco C) Fort Collins D) Bangkok."

At one point, I admit I did lose my patience when I couldn't remember who I had gotten car insurance from in May 2002 and she told me I wasn't allowed to "just guess."

Anyway, it seems that if I write a thesis on banking in the modern age and fax it to Citibank in the next 10 days, I will probably get my $2200 back. I also had to commit to testifying in a criminal trial if they catch the evil genius who did this.

2 comments:

Penny K said...

Recommend checking your credit rating. I have 2 friends who have recently dealt with identity theft. And it's not pretty.

Unknown said...

That's scary! Have you checked your credit card to find out whether you've purchased a Mercedes in the last week or two? It sounds like you may have filled your glass in Fla. too often and they scammed your credit card. Seriously, check into it sooner than later.