So last week my wallet was stolen.
No one lifted it from my house, or picked my pocket, but it was stolen out of the console in my car on a day when I thought I locked my car, but apparently didn’t hit the correct button on the key.
It was so much easier just turning the key in the lock, but that’s just complaining.
So some enterprising thief was greeted with an unlocked door sometime around 2 a.m. last week, for which he or she apprised themselves of my wallet, and $2 in quarters. Quickly, they ran up $500 in purchases online at Foot Locker with the lone “emergency only” credit card I kept in there. There were also some unsavory charges for Internet smut that were regrettable, certainly.
What a thing, huh?
I walked out around 5:30 a.m. and was greeted with an empty bag of Jax cheese curls floating lightly in the wind on the sidewalk. Now, I knew I had been gnawing on those angina invitations the night before.
And I hadn’t left them on the sidewalk.
I left them on the console so’s I could enjoy them later.
Wiping the sleep from my eyes, it began to set in that something was amiss.
Luckily, I have nothing and keep nothing, so there wasn’t a great deal of harm aside from spending three hours I’ll never get back at the Registry to get a new driver’s license.
It reminds me of a friend of mine three years ago who got sucked in by a scammer who actually got access to his bank account. Getting the right numbers from a check he used to pay someone, the thief was able to get into the account.
The scam was pretty sophisticated, so the trick was well-rehearsed.
First they would use the account numbers to make four or five small deposits. In my buddy’s case, they put up a total of about $7.45 in deposits. Somehow, that enabled them to get access to transfer money.
But they didn’t know my buddy is broke 363 days of the year, and they picked the wrong two days.
They tried to take out $500.
Insufficient funds.
They tried to take out $200.
Insufficient funds.
They tried to take $60.
Still, insufficient funds.
So they just gave up and moved on.
At the bank, my buddy asked the bank teller what to do.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Whaddya mean nothing?” he yelled.
“Consider it a badge of honor,” she said. “You’re like the only person who ever made money from getting hacked by an identity thief. They stole your bank account and you came out eight bucks ahead!”
A puff of the cigar to that guy for besting the bad guys.
- • •
One of the stupidest things that has gone on in Boston since pavement replaced dirt is the utilities digging up a street that has just been newly paved.
It is inevitable. You can have your street sit dormant for two decades, but as soon as the asphalt machines roll in to lay a brand new, pretty street – the utility companies won’t be far behind to dig up that brand new street to do their bidding.
Last year, I leveraged a friendship around the way to stop that nonsense on my street.
I don’t think the gas company was so happy with me.
Now they’ve dug up the sidewalk and street right in front of my house – and only my house – three times in the last year.
Why? No one knows. No records of it.
Put that one in the Old Time Boston ‘Whaddya gonna do?’ file.