I'm sure Sweden is a nice place, but someone there is trying to spend my money--hard earned money (well, maybe not, depends on how many days are left until the weekend). There is only one Kato, I assure you, and he doesn't live in Stockholm. Perhaps I should explain.

Recently I received a call from my credit card company's fraud department asking me to confirm some charges. I didn't think too much of it until I tried to log in electronically and view my statement, which failed with an ambiguous message about the system's inability to provide that service or other such jibber jabber. If they were restricting access to even viewing the account I knew something was amiss.

I gave the fraud hotline a call and after a few button pushes I was read a list of recent charges on my card. Among them was an $800+ airline ticket, several items ranging from 20-50 dollars billed simply as "Travel Charge", and a twelve dollar bill from The Olive Garden.

I leave it to you to figure out which one of those was actually from me. I'll give you a hint: I dipped my breadsticks in the Alfredo.

Clearly somebody thought they could have a good old time on Kato's tab. I don't think so. I have no qualms about surrending my cheddar to the fine folks at Ikea, and hey, who doesn't like those cute little Dala horses, but unless you're a beautiful, broke redhead, I'm not a charity. I indicated this to the automated system (oddly enough, what I just said was option number 5) and was transferred to a live operator.

At this point I'd like to give mad props to Chris who works for my credit card company. He's the fraud rep I was transferred to. I can't be certain that he was the one responsible for spotting the malfeasance, but I'm going to give him the credit anyway, if for no other reason than being cool on the phone and taking care of business right then and there. Good looking out Chris, I've got your back if you ever get infected with a computer virus or need a non-vital organ donated or something.

He told me that they got suspicious when the charges came from Sweden. I can only assume that Chris, no doubt the diligent and talented anti-fraud guy that he is, took one look at the charges and realized that no mortal man could be enjoying Hospitaliano in Ohio while at the same time buying plane tickets in the land of those delicious little candy fish. The jig was up.

So, Chris immediately cancelled my credit card and told me that they didn't pay any of the fraudulent charges (by Federal law the most anyone is liable for is fifty bucks anyway). Crappy time of year for it to happen since I intended on doing some Christmas shopping this week, but it won't hurt me to pay with cash for once, I guess. I also have to go through and update any place that has my old credit card number as a withdrawal source, but that's a minor inconvenience. So, I guess I can now append to the long list of titles following my name (...Amateur Vaudeville Comic, Home PC Repair, Walken For President Financier, Fancy Lad, Trained Attack Geek...) the phrase: "Credit Card Fraud Victim". Such is life.

It's anybody's guess as to how the thief got my information, but it doesn't surprise me. I've had the account for several years and I can't count the number of places I've used it, particularly for online shopping. Any one of them could have had a sales database compromised (I know of one that, in fact, was a year or so ago) or had an unscrupulous employee stealing information. I should probably consider myself lucky that something didn't happen sooner.

Oh, and to the scumbag that tried to use my money to go gallivanting around Europe: Go fuck yourself. Why not try being a benefit to society for a change, instead of a detriment.

Skål.