Andrew Bolt: There was one key lesson revealed in the credit card thief’s spending pattern
After my wife’s credit card details were pinched the spending started timidly, at first, before becoming a splurge. But there was one thing they never bought.
Andrew Bolt
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A month ago someone pinched details of my wife’s credit card. I’ve since discovered how a thief spends their money.
Correction: our money.
It’s been a wakeup. This thief knows how to party – travel, gambling, make-up, go karts, restaurants and flowers. So many flowers!
Is that why they’re apparently poor, and – to judge by what they’ve spent this past month – doomed to stay poor?
On the other hand, what have I been waiting for? My wife and I are so careful with our spending, and normally check our credit card statements weekly.
But after decades of saving up from working up to five jobs between us, a stranger shows we might as well have spent as if there’s no tomorrow. Tomorrow some thief could take it.
I know, the Commonwealth Bank may give us back the $16,000 this thief spent – or so we hope – but I so detest dishonesty that I went to the shop where my wife suspects this may have started.
She’d given her credit card to a shop assistant who said there was some problem with the machine and ducked behind the counter. The next day the spending started – timidly, at first with, a pizza from Big Al at Carrum Downs, plus a tank of petrol.
But when I called in, the assistant had taken off for a long weekend interstate.
Still, maybe it wasn’t her, but it shouldn’t be hard to work out the thief from the telling list of what they’ve spent this past month, if the police and the bank really tried.
But you know how it is. So many thieves, so few police.
Two days after the thief filled up their car, they bought a dinner at the Caesar’s Italian restaurant at the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges. Lovely!
But they also ordered $1076.50 of stuff from the Montu Group, which sells medicinal cannabis. Two weeks later they bought even more – $1244.50.
Wait. Are these battlers trying to cope with cancer? Should I actually feel pity?
If so, they’d decided to see the world while they could. They quickly bought tickets to Sydney from Jetstar, and a week later, February 25, they were off for a weekend, after spending $300 on makeup from Glam I Am.
It was the trip of people who don’t travel much. They checked out the view from the Sydney Tower while having a feed, and went hyper-karting. (Did they take the kids or grandchildren?)
The highlight? A trip to Sydney’s zoo and a meal at the Trippas White Catering venue – $408.16, no less.
The thief then apparently shared my wife’s credit card, perhaps with family, because it started to be used every few days at Hawthorn East’s Coles Express and eventually daily at the Clayton Boost Juice, half an hour from the Carrum Downs area and Mornington Peninsula where it was used regularly throughout.
By then, one of the thieves – I’m assuming female – couldn’t believe her luck and cut loose. She ordered nearly $800 of bedclothes from Pillow Talk, plus $441.40 of clothes from The Iconic, all on the same day. And $540.68 on AirBNB, maybe for another weekend away.
In fact, a week later she – or they – booked yet another trip, this time $1792.02 of flights from Virgin, plus $1555 of accommodation from AirBNB.
She – or a husband, maybe – felt so lucky that day that they also bet $500 through Sportsbet, and ordered $1229 of stuff from Forty Winks to sleep better at night.
In fact, that day, March 7, also proved these thieves could eat almost everywhere all at once. They bought McDonalds and food from Frankies at Carrum Downs, in Melbourne’s south, a meal at Paramjit’s Indian restaurant in Melbourne’s north and another at Caesar’s in Melbourne’s south east.
In their last week with our credit card, something odd happened. The thieves – still imagining a woman – spent huge on flowers.
Was there a wedding? Some party?
It started with a $156.85 order from an online-florist, but the next day it rained blossoms: $270 from Stem by Stem, $700 from Bodhi and Me and $1320 from the Bayside Flower Garden.
How sweet, but do you know what I never saw the thieves buy, other than something once from Officeworks in Bentleigh East?
Not one hardware tool, book, museum ticket, donation, gardening implement or anything suggesting they lived a prudent and productive life
Guess that’s why they must steal from those who do.
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Originally published as Andrew Bolt: There was one key lesson revealed in the credit card thief’s spending pattern
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