Fraud

Listen. We like to have fun around here. We kid, we joke, we embellish and hyperbolize and mix a few metaphors, all in the name of telling a good story.

But I assure you the following is 100% true. The names have NOT been changed to protect the innocent. I couldn’t make these up if I tried. There are limits to creativity.

That said, please enjoy this story of my small misfortune.

You know it’s going to be a rough day when you wake up to a text from your credit card company:

Did you make this purchase from Yves Saint Laurent for $725?

I imagined the suspicious credit card fraud person flagging the charge. They must have gasped and shouted, “What’s all this? Carrie, shopping at Yves Saint Laurent? But she still buys sunglasses at the gas station!” Then they probably turned slowly to their neighbor and said in a low voice, “Some mischief is afoot.”

I quickly checked my email and yes, there was an email from YSL asking me to activate my account.

"Wot?” I said aloud, still quite groggy. “Did I go sleep-shopping last night?”

If so, it must have been quite a spree, for there were other emails. Dozens of them.

Please confirm your account at Damn Near Kilt ‘Em, one said.

And another: Congrats! Your account has been created at MadGerbilUK!

And then: Thank you for signing up to support the San Francisco Ballet.

“What happened last night?” I asked no one in particular.

The accounts were made in nondescript male names: JacobSamuel1 was confirmed at a shop called Just BB Guns, MichaelJosh was all set to start shopping at DreamHorses.com, and Thomas86340 (the jetsetter of the group, apparently) had opened accounts with several German and Russian sites.

However, as I read through the emails, I started to think of this mystery…individual? team of miscreants? as Alternate Carrie. The Carrie I might have been if I’d indulged all of my slightest, most trifling whims. Each email gave another little clue as to Alternate Carrie’s interests. She likes to garden (Vermont Bean Seed Company). She appreciates model trains (Legacy Station). She’s an avid vaper (AvidVaper.com). She has some questions, and she thinks Catholicism may have the answers (Catholicism Has the Answer).

Five hundred eighty-eight emails, five hundred eighty-eight clues.

YSL was the only place she’d successfully made a purchase with my credit card, but here are a few more sites Alternate Carrie hoped to patronize:

  • BeanBagBazaar

  • Sassy Spud

  • Petsmart Nigeria

  • Kidcarz.com

  • GayCities (“The city guide created by people like you.”)

  • Seal Beach Police

  • “SINNER’s BONES”

  • Pickleball Superstore

  • pet o’clock

  • Bearded Skullz BC

  • My Fish Room

  • Tool Depot 24/7

  • Staple Pigeon

  • Mysecret wigs

  • ELK

  • boohooMAN

  • Jerky.com

  • 2Kool4Skool

  • Margaritaville Apparel

  • Pink Chicken

  • Super Luxury Business Cards

  • Brooke’s Candy Co. (I would consider keeping this one)

  • Alpaca Direct (this one, too)

  • Fascia Expert

  • Academia Furniture

  • Undercover Lingerie (for spies—a poison dart pops out of the underwire!)

  • Age of Wonders Heaven Forum

  • Hospice Lotteries Association

  • Dinosaw

  • The Lightbulb Co.

  • ron (I’m extra wary of opening this one)

After a while, I wandered over to the Yves Saint Laurent website, wondering what Alternate Carrie had purchased. Not a dress, certainly, or a faux-fur jacket—those sell for thousands of dollars. Even a bikini top runs close to $900, and that’s made of roughly five inches of fabric. She wouldn’t buy a purse or a necklace or a denim ball cap that could pay my mortgage for a month…

And then I spotted it. $725. Metal-free tanned leather. Dark beige.

The Cassandre Matelassé Compact Zip Around Wallet in Grain de Poudre Embossed Leather.

GRAIN DE POUDRE, PEOPLE. THIS IS NOT A DRILL

OF COURSE Alternate Carrie would buy this useless little thing. Real Carrie likes to stuff crumpled wads of cash in her pockets or her shoe, but Alternate Carrie has all her credit cards organized alphabetically in her compact zip-around wallet! Alternate Carrie loooves a good matelassé to go with her kilts and her secret wigs! And everyone knows Alternate Carrie cannot resist a quilted overstitch! In fact, I’m surprised she didn’t buy one in every color: black and dark natural and chartreuse yellow and FOG!

However, Real Carrie did not buy this wallet in any color. I texted the credit card people that no, I did not approve this purchase, at which point I assume the fraud person let out a sigh of relief.

“It’s okay, everyone,” they probably said. “It’s alright. We’ve got our girl back. Now let’s get a new card out to her pronto. She’s got forty bucks worth of Taco Bell burritos to buy.”