Police Academy...Here I Come!

I've decided to quit my job at the Credit Union...I'm pursuing a new line of work...police work. Okay, not really...I'm keeping my day job but I had so much fun this week doing a little 'bit of detective work.

Here's the story in a nutshell...one of our member's checkbooks had gotten stolen. She was not aware of it until someone tried to come in and cash a check. When the signature on the check didn't match the signature on the card, we contacted our member to verify that this was a legitimate check...it was not. Our member at that time realized her wallet (with checkbook and credit cards, etc) was missing from her purse. At this point, our teller handed the matter over to me...
Some of you may recall we had an incident happen like this a few months. That situation scared the you know what out of me...but this was a 19-20 year old kid trying to pass this check...he didn't scare me. If anything I was more like, "Make my day, punk"...well, I asked the kid where he'd gotten the check...he said he was cashing it for a friend of his because she'd lost her ID. He handed me his cell phone and told me I could talk to her. I did...for two seconds, when I told her who I was she hung up. I told the kid I needed to write down the phone number...it was amazing how cooperative he was when he found out it was a stolen check. So, I wrote down the number and name for the girl and escorted the kid out of the building...

After kid left, I started thinking I could probably pressure him to get the wallet back for our member.
#1 I hate thieves...that's just stupid and such a selfish act to steal things...it's Kindergarten 101 of right and wrong but
#2 I really wanted our member to be able and say, "Not only did OUR Credit Union stop fraud on our account....but they also recovered the stolen wallet"...(I'm over the top on Customer Service and I am very proud of what we do at the Credit Union)
#3 Identity theft...that just makes me mad. Criminals that do this think that it doesn't really hurt anyone atleast in the realm of finances because they know funds are protected...but it does. It affects all of us...if rates go up on our fraud insurance premiums...guess what? Members and customers of financial institutions pay the price...as well as employees because at times layoffs are required especially in the economy we are in right now.
Okay, I'll step down from my soap box but just for the record I think punishment for bank fraud and identity theft needs to be much stiffer to send a message that we will not tolerate it. Back to the story...

To make a long story short, kid was scared spitless (YES I SAID SPITLESS) and he worked with me to get any and all info I needed regarding friend. I won't bore you with all of the details of the girl, but after some good cop/bad cop techniques learned from the many hours I've invested in watching cop shows...I'm happy to report the wallet was recovered. I WAS ECSTATIC. It actually was a lot of fun--and a rush like no other to have the wallet in my hands giving it to our member, but I think I'd rather stick to helping our members with ordinary things like cash withdrawals and deposits, statement copies, credit card disputes...versus the more intense things like criminal investigations. We've turned the case over to the authorities now...I'll let them proceed from here.

What a great way to end the week!