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When Sam Charles left a house party in March without his wallet, he was mildly annoyed, but had no idea of the long-term chaos he would have to deal with as a result.
The 24-year-old had assumed someone would find his wallet and try to return it to him within a day or two. However, he was soon dealing with a very different situation, with his bank cards being used for a series of small transactions.
Mr Charles, a physiotherapist from Melbourne’s northern suburbs, cancelled his cards immediately when he saw the activity and thought he was in the clear. Months later, however, he realised that whoever had come into possession of his wallet was still making good use of it.
A fortnight ago he received a notice of assignment of debt to the tune of almost $2000, with it emerging his driver’s licence and Medicare card had been used to enter a phone contract with Optus.
“At first I felt shocked; I was just really taken aback – I didn’t really know what the notice was and I thought it was probably a scam, but I looked up the debt company and realised it was legit,” Mr Charles said.
“Then I was just confused. I really didn’t expect there to be any more issues with someone using the cards in my wallet after I had that money taken out of my account.
“It never crossed my mind that something like this could happen.”
The first thought which struck Mr Charles once he worked out what had happened was that the criminal who entered the phone contract must bear a fairly strong resemblance.
“You’d hope he looked pretty much bang on – the Optus worker has let me down if they didn’t have a good look at the licence and the bloke,” he laughed.
He said he was relieved to be told by police he would not be liable for the phone debt after he reported it at his local police station.
Victoria Police investigated the theft after it was reported.
“They put my mind at ease a little,” he said.
“I’ll have to look out for other things that might implicate me in certain bills though – it could keep happening, because they had potentially been using my ID for a fair bit.”
He warned others to move quickly if they could not find their wallet, so that their cards could not be used for nefarious purposes.
“I should have been more alert, more vigilant when I lost the wallet – it’s a pretty bleak reminder that some people will exploit you in that situation,” Mr Charles said.
An Optus spokesperson said people should immediately file a report on government website ReportCyber if they believed they were the victim of a cyber crime.
“Scams and cyber crime are a scourge on Australia, and becoming increasingly common,” the spokesperson said.
“While Optus has increased our own vigilance with additional authentication measures, we can place added measures on the accounts of vulnerable customers, and encourage them to reach out to us.
“We now also offer credit monitoring services, which can help add further protection.”
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