It was mine, now it's yours.

The BBQ Pit
21

Ugh - people who steal suck. Niiiiiiice rant, though! I’m glad to hear that you got your purse back.

I’ve only had one experience with this. I was sitting outside a classroom at a Uni and realized my datebook was gone. I backtracked everywhere I’d been and finally called the University police. They eventually found my driver’s license and some other misc. crap in one of the men’s restrooms. They took my debit card and anything else of value. But the weird thing was that they didn’t dump the date book - maybe they were afraid of fingerprints showing up? I don’t know but it really freaked me out that this random person could see all that I’d done in the last few months and what I was planning on doing, as well. My datebook is, more or less, a very dry diary. It creeped me out.

Tibs.

22

Great rant, and I’m glad things worked out so well!

About 10 years ago I was taking a shortcut throught CU’s campus one morning, when I saw this guy’s wallet pop right out of his pocket as he rocketed down the bike path past me. I yelled, but it seems he had his walkman turned up to loud to hear me…

This put me in an odd place, what do I do? I went home, sat down by the phone and tried to figure out how to find this guy. OOS driver’s license, no help there. No student ID. Tried calling various information numbers, as I DID have his name. Nada. Okay, time to start calling random phone numbers found on bits of paper. The 3rd. or 4th. was an ex-girlfriend of his, who was somewhat helpful, and soon I was speaking to his roommate.

“Okay, I’ll tell him to call ya.”

Great, I just wanna get rid of the thing at this point, and now I’m tied to the phone. I was willing to drop it off, but couldn’t get anyone to tell me where. Argh. Hours later, he calls, and we meet outside my apartment. “Here ya go,” I say, “It’s all there!” He gave me a “What the fuck ever, dude” look, mumbled “Yeah, right,” and took off. Never saw/heard from him again.

Looking back, I really wish I’d kept his $400 dollars. Or at least helped myself to a small “reward”…

(sorry about the hijack, I really am glad you got nearly everything back.)

23

Did somebody steal the SDMB hamster? Let me try again to post…

Lissla Lissar, I’m sorry you have to go through this mess too. I don’t want to alarm you (and if you’ve already done this, then just ignore the rest), but you may want to contact the credit bureaus in Canada to tag your reports. It’s a simple process, relatively speaking, which will require loaning institutions to check with you first should a request for a loan from a purported you come in. You just know someone dealing in identity theft isn’t going to pay back a loan. About Identity Theft.

I was able to do this through automated phone menus and it took maybe a half an hour to do all three. In Canada, two of the three credit bureaus are the same as here in the States: Equifax (Equifax Canada) and Trans Union (in Canada). The third in Canada is Northern Credit Bureaus. It’s worth the peace of mind.
Darth Nader, you did good. I appreciate your effort.

Okay SDMB hamster, please accept this post…
<plugs fingers into ears and hits the submit key with her big toe>

24

I’m sorry to hear about your purse being stolen, but regarding your mother’s check to you; couldn’t she call the bank and have them stop payment?

25

medstar. she did put a stop payment on the check the day after the purse was stolen. I’ll have to ask her if there was a fee associated with the action. At my bank, it’s $20. winces

26

And get this: There’s a $20 fee for stopping payment on a check, but it only stops it for 6 months. After that, you have to pay another $20 to put another hold on it.

Don’t get me started ranting about banks!

27

A friend of mine had her bag, mobile phone, digital camera and wallet stolen from a restaurant. :frowning:

Everything but the bag was less than 6 months old. The digital camera itself was worth about $1000, and she had just withdrawn $200 to pay her landlord. I don’t think she cancelled her credit card in time because she told me that the thieves had gone on a spending spree and actually gone over her credit card limit. The semi-good news is that they bought petrol with her credit card (forged her signature) so the police have the date and time, which should make checking the video tapes easy. I don’t know whether they’ll find the thieves though.

28

*WHAT?!? *
Isn’t there some kind of time limit on cashing personal checks? Like 90 days or 3 months? My paycheck says 90 days.

The damages so far total about $900. And this is with no action on the credit cards so I guess I’m relatively lucky. The consequences of petty theft ain’t petty.

Hope they got the car plates on video, Kayeby. May their next time on film come with numbers below their faces.

29

Personal cheques in Canada get staledated in a year. After that, the banks aren’t supposed to cash them, but don’t bet on it; they do slip through.

I found a wallet once, and returned it to the person ASAP. It had been stolen by someone else, so the money was already gone when I found it, or else it would have been safe with me (my mom didn’t raise no thieves). I got a raised eyebrow and scant thanks when I returned it to the rightful owner (after being inconvenienced by them something like Darth was), but what can ya do? I know MY karma was good with that. Maybe next time I’ll just drop it in the mailbox too.

30

A 10 from the DC judge which, while not as good as a 10 from a NYC or Chicago judge, still beats a 10 from any Minnysoder judge ANY day;)