Pirate charity

An imposter has been making some interesting purchases with my credit card number.

When a man from my bank called a couple weeks ago to tell me they suspected credit card fraud, he read a list of recent transactions and asked whether or not they were my own.

“I’m seeing a purchase made at somewhere called Cheeseburger in ... P-A-R-S... is that Paris? Have you gone shopping at Cheeseburger in Paris?”

“Cheeseburger In Paradise,” I corrected. “And yes, that was me.”

“And what about the China ... Buffet?” he asked.

“Also mine,” I confessed. This was irritating. Did my bank suspect fraud because they thought someone was buying things in Paris and China?

“Okay,” he continued. “How about purchases with Napster?”

Uh-oh.

“No ... I use LimeWire.”

“And did you make a donation to a children’s hospital in Melbourne, Australia?”

“Donate? Me? Never.”

So the bank man shut down my credit card.

I was by myself in Chicago at the time, which isn’t exactly where I would have chosen to be when I got this news, but luckily I had access to another account.

The bank man told me my imposter’s only purchase that had successfully gone through was the donation to the children’s hospital, in the amount of four dollars. He gave me a number that I could call to dispute this charge if I wished. I thought about calling, but then I envisioned a doctor unplugging a young boy from life support and explaining that his funding had fallen through.

Meanwhile, I would probably take my four dollars straight to the drive-thru of McDonald’s – where I could afford exactly six Chicken McNuggets – while somewhere in Australia, grieving parents would be lowering their son into his grave.

So, by not calling, I may have saved a life. Which was really nice of me.

But still, it leads to the question: Who steals someone’s money and then donates it to a good cause? Who is this modern-day Robin Hood? If I were to steal someone’s credit card, I imagine I would take it straight to the China Buffet and never give a second thought to the greater concerns of humanity or any other cause that did not directly benefit either my hunger, my fleeting materialistic whims or my own vanity.
But maybe that was the point; maybe this thief looked through my credit history, noticed how selfish I am and decided to teach me a lesson.

Point taken, credit card thief. And might I add that I also admire your attempts to pay for music rather than pirate it. Even though it would have been much easier for you to illegally download your songs for free, you went through all the trouble of stealing a credit card to pay for them. Your respect for the entertainment industry is to be commended.

This has been a paradox and a wake-up call: My credit card thief is a more proactive citizen than I will probably ever be. But from now on, I will try to follow his or her example.