Thursday Update: Scammed At the Gas Pump

Been quite a week here in the Buffalo Valley. My internet connection is at best meager and at worst non-existent. I have company and have mostly been in river mode for the past seven days.

On top of that, Tuesday, as I was about to leave with friends for a fishing trip, I received a call on my cell phone from the Fraud Department of my bank back in the South telling me they suspected I was the "victim" of fraudulent charges on my debit card that were racking up for gas purchases in Florida.

"We see you're in Wyoming," they said. "but are you going back and forth to Florida?"

I responded emphatically that I haven't been in Florida since being there four days in March.

The upshot is indeed my debit card was scammed outside Tampa in March and someone made a new card and has been charging my account for gas to the tune of almost $1,000 in July.

Though I have Internet banking and briefly checked my account several times during this busy season, I didn't look carefully enough and certainly didn't catch all the charges at some Sunshine gas place in Florida. I had cavalierly covered a short fall in my balance even though I didn't know why I had run short.

It's one of the only times in the year that I don't pay as much attention as I should. Being too busy to pay attention can be costly.

I'll write more later on this, but suffice it to say, we've stopped the bleeding and cut the criminals off. Meanwhile, I'm am back to watching where every penny goes. The bank assures me when I get back to Nashville and sign the proper affidavits, they will reimburse me the money.

USA Today and many other news outlets are writing about these gas pump scams. If it happened to me, it can happen to you too. Be Aware! It's only just begin. More later.