Before I catch up, I just wanted to say THANK YOU for all the monetary vibes sent this way.
I have just returned from a very interesting and enlightening visit to the bank.
Over half of the funds were returned early this morning, when one of the companies found out that fraudulent activity was occurring.
Two of the other companies were spoken to, in my presence, and one yielded volatile information which confirmed the news from the earlier company. The final company, which had the smallest amount of sales, was reticent, oh, yes, very reticent and not at all forthcoming with any information.
So, at this point, more than two-thirds of the money has been safely put back into the account, the remainder is expected to be returned tomorrow.
Now, for the interesting stuff: two of the companies are graphics companies. The items attempted to be purchased were multiple banners saying "FIGHT MALARIA," the third company is a webstore,
www.hottopic.com which is the company which is being reticent. All that the nice young lady at the bank could get out of HotTopic was the fact that the order was placed via an IP Phone normally used by the hearing impaired.
From the first and second companies, we were able to glean that the person attempting to make purchases, also tried with two previous debit card numbers which sequentially followed and/or preceded our numbers. One was an attempt with a MasterCard number - which our bank does not use. The sequential Visa number used was another client at our branch bank, who will be informed of the attempted compromise.
And for the really volatile and interesting - we have a name, a location and a valid email address of the person who is responsible for this scam.
And in other good news - today I trained Sam Morgan's newest hands-on manager; he'll be replacing both myself and our current dining room manager, who is considering a job in Vegas which will take him away for two years.
