Going, going ... gone

It pays to be aware of dormant fraud if you don’t want to be caught short on an overseas trip, writes

DRAINED: Sophisticated skimming can result in cash being taken from an account months after the first hit.

IT doesn’t usually take more than a day or two to find out if a credit or debit card has been compromised, because skimmers get to work straight away, draining as much of your money as they can.

The race is on to shut the card down as quickly as possible and go about getting your money back.

But what if your card had been skimmed and then nothing happened for more than a year, while the thieves lie in wait?

I call it dormant fraud and it happened to me with a Mastercard travel debit card, which I had topped up with funds before heading overseas.

It had been 15 months between foreign journeys and I added a couple of thousand euros to the card a few days

before flying out for Ireland. Around 2am the next morning my phone rang. It was my bank.

My newly cashed-up card had been drained.

The plundering was happening simultaneously via multiple ATMs across China; somewhere I have never been.

Apparently my card had been skimmed during my previous trip to Mexico and I had not noticed my final $20 of balance was stolen at that time.

In a display of great work ethic and dedication, the thieves had been vigilantly waiting for me to add more money to it so they could get back to work.

The fact they got me within hours suggests they were either manually checking the

balance every day or, more alarmingly, working with enough technological nous to be alerted immediately when money went in.

It must also be a relatively sophisticated international operation, because I struggle to see a link between Mexican retailers and Chinese ATMs.

Luckily, banks are pretty sophisticated themselves these days, so my institution was able to recognise and put a stop to the dodgy withdrawals, but not before 1500 euros ($2350) were gone.

Of course, I would most likely get the money back, after a 15-day investigation process, which didn’t really help my holiday that was beginning two days later.

Luckily, I was in a position to transfer some extra money

from my savings to cover me until the bank reimbursed my losses.

So I went to a branch to get a new card and there was the next problem. My compromised card couldn’t be shut down while under investigation.

I could have a new card though, which the tellers set up and helped me transfer money to. Then they informed me it couldn’t be activated until my old one was deactivated.

This obviously wasn’t acceptable, so it was eventually determined I could keep a secondary card attached to the account my funds were drained from, but accessible via a separate, noncompromised card. Confusing, but all was well in the end.