No one likes to think about getting scammed out of money, but the truth is that it happens every day.

Most of us will never have the opportunity to confront or catch those perpetrators ourselves, as much as we might dream about it.

This woman did, though, so lets live vicariously through her.

Check out the details.

hunted down my credit card thieves

Yesterday morning, I received an email notification from my credit card company stating a transaction for $1500 at a medspa was declined and another stating it was approved.

I immediately called said CC company to report the fraudulent charge.

Turns out, my card has had fraudulent charges over the past 3 weeks with purchases including various hotels in my area, eBay, gas station, self storage, and moving truck rental.

Whoa, this is a lot to charge on a card. That’s probably a pretty high number.

I rarely use this card. The last time I used it in person was in February and last online purchase in 2023.

Fortunately, my CC company flagged all recent charges and closed my card.

This morning, my significant other had a doctor appointment in the same city as a hotel purchase made yesterday.

After the doctor, BF asked me what I thought we should do today.

I said, “well you wanted to shop for some new shoes…or we can swing by this hotel up the street and see if the credit card thieves are still there?”

Otherwise said as, “New shoes, or we go on an adventure?”

The amount seemed like it would cover 2 or 3 days. So BF and I go to the hotel to see if the people were still checked in and to let them know the card was stolen and the charges would be reversed.

Front desk lady was pissed.

She was able to find the reservation by card number and noted that the person had “kept changing cards” to pay for the room.

These people need to be caught. But how? Room number?

Of course they didn’t tell me the room number, much to my bfs dismay (BF was hoping to get a room key to take their stuff…lol, right).

I called CC company, and they asked me to call the police.

That’ll take hours, I’m sure…

I called the sheriff’s department, and they arrived within 20 minutes! I was surprised they even came.

I gave them my report, ID, and credit card. The deputy asked if I wanted to prosecute — I said yes! (But can I prosecute if my CC company is going to refund all the money anyway?)

Then, they went inside and spoke to the front desk who provided them the invoice. BF and I waited outside in front of the lobby.

Then, through the automatic sliding doors I hear the front desk lady yell, “that’s him, he’s trying to leave!”

I’m sorry, is this an FX show?!

Dude with a bull terrier and several bags gets placed in cuffs. He gets brought outside, searched and doggo gets cuffed to a trash can.

Then, another little guy gets brought out in cuffs.

A third deputy arrives and brings out a fancy lady with a face full of fillers, two suitcases, and a Coach backpack.

Fillers? Suitcases? This is a CLASSIC scammer.

Four officers start going through the backpacks on the hood of their car.

We see passports, ID’s, credit cards. They pull out a big credit card printing machine and a laptop.

Then, they pull out a big Ziploc filled with crystal meth, and the cop exclaims, “Here we go!” and turns towards us to flash a smile.

Now, we’re cooking with gas. That’s gotta be all though, right?

Two of them go back to search the hotel room and bring down two bags with more drugs, a scale, four car keys and a big wad of cash.

Unfortunately, none of the cars were in the parking lot, and the perps said they had been traveling by Uber.

The cops contacted one of the thief’s friends to pick up the dog, who arrived pretty quickly.

It was an older dude with tattoos, flashy jewelry in an old luxury SUV. Don’t worry, we got his pics and license plates. All these guys seemed like characters out of “The Brothers Sun.”

The deputies then gave me all the paperwork and told me that one of the guys said they stole my card off of the Internet.

Wow, some people use the internet for TikTok, some for…fraud?

I would have guessed that they used a scanner while I was at the fair a few weeks ago. I find that so weird because I haven’t used my card online in almost a year.

Apparently, they made a physical card that had a different name on it.

OK, you gotta hand it to ’em — they’re probably pretty decent at Photoshop.

Anywho, I walk inside to give the front desk a copy of the incident number, and then I remembered something else.

I remember seeing another transaction for a storage unit that was made yesterday and two charges at a rental truck company.

I go back outside and talk to the sheriff and asked him if he wanted me to try to figure out where that was.

I was able to track down the storage location to a city about 15 minutes away, but no-can-do on the trucks.

Wow, the fact that the storage unit could even be tracked is amazing.

I called the storage place and they confirmed that a payment was made with my card but would not give me the unit number.

From there, the sheriff said that it was out of their jurisdiction and they would try to get a search warrant but that might take a while.

However, it might be helpful if I made a police report with the other city. So with nothing better to do, I drove over there and made another police report regarding the storage unit.

What a chill day! Who needs shoe shopping?

That’s it for now, will update if anything else happens. In the meantime, I will call up the credit bureau to freeze my social security (?) tell my dog to be on alert and load magazines.

Any other suggestions? Also, Copper asked if I wanted to prosecute… But that was before the drug bust…

So do I need a lawyer? Thanks in advance.

Um, wow, this is one of those stories that leaves your mouth agape.

What’s Reddit got to say about this series of unfortunate scammer events?

First thing’s first — how’s that dog?

Next, we gotta notice that this is not petty — it’s NUCLEAR.

Another commenter noted Nancy Drew’s got nothin’ on this scammer snoop.

Finally, the ultimate callout — wrong subreddit! Get yourself in Righteous Justice — STAT!

What an epic scammer story that hardly anyone gets to experience.

We can dream, right?

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.