SHOW & TELL - IDENTITY THEFT

On Saturday, my parents, Kev & I drove to a neighboring state for a funeral. On the way there, I phoned a local florist and placed an order for a bouquet to be sent to the funeral home. The service was beautiful. Very sad, but beautiful. We drove back to my parents' house and slept, then returned to our little corner of the world this morning. As I snuggled in my office chair with my protein shake in hand, I saw the light on the answering machine flashing.

Message 1: Card services has placed a block on my credit/debit card because of some suspect charges. The automated voice asked me to please call to verify the charges and lift the block.

No problem. I figured the block was placed because the florist is roughly four hours from my home state. I'd just call and verify the charges were placed by me and get the block lifted.

Message 2: The florist called to say the charge didn't go through. The flowers would not be delivered.

I can handle the identity theft. It's happened to me before. A few years ago, someone in LA had used my social security number to create a utilities account. This time, someone got my credit card number, my address, my phone number, and who knows what else. They didn't charge much - just a few measly charges to an overnight printing service and some other places. Maybe a bit over a hundred dollars. No big deal. I can handle it. I'm pissed off and put out, but I can handle it.

But the thing that makes me LIVID right now is the fact that my cousin, his son, the 14, and 17 year old children of the deceased never received the flowers from my family. They've been through so much the past few months, and the flowers were just supposed to be a reminder of the support we'd like to offer as extended family. But they didn't receive flowers from us. I feel like an ass right now. I ordered the flowers on my card to represent the 30+ people in my family. Now it looks as though no one in my family thought enough to send flowers.

I've done the telling, so for the "show" part of this show and tell, I'd like to show the email address that the identity thief used to purchase services from Lifelock.com. Ironically, it's a service designed to protect its clients from identity theft. That's right. Was tomrice35@live.com playing a cruel joke? Maybe. Maybe he won't like his email address plastered on the internet in association with identity theft. Maybe he won't like the nasty emails I'm going to send (feel free to do the same). Maybe tomrice35@live.com is just a bad person who steals from innocent people. I don't know. But I do know that tomrice35@live.com is the reason a grieving family received one less floral arrangement in their time of despair. Thanks tomrice35@live.com. You're a theif and a prick.