A valley man says a woman cloned his debit card and has been enjoying herself on his dime ever since. Plus, he says, the crime was caught on camera. Now, he's taken matters into his own hands and tracked the woman down.
Sanchez woke up Wednesday morning with a bunch of text alerts from his bank about purchases he says he did not make.
For example, $173 to the Plaza Hotel, $129 to Fry's Electronics, and $95 to Sabi Smoke Shop were purchases all made on his card. Those are just three of more than a dozen transactions between 1 a.m. Tuesday and 12 p.m. Wednesday. The transactions totaled about $500.
"It's not that I'm hurting for the money, but it's the fact that I work for it and I'm not gonna just let someone jack me," said Sanchez.
So Sanchez played his own detective and went to check out these locations. At Sabi Smoke Shop, he obtained surveillance video of the woman he says cloned his debit card. It appears the woman tries to make a purchase, gets rejected with one card, and then switches to a new card. Sanchez says he canceled his debit card 30 minutes before this transaction at Sabi Smoke Shop.
"She ended up using her own card and that's how I found out her name," he said.
Not just her name. He found out her license plate number and her address as well. Now, he plans to confront her.
While most victims of crimes like this just want their money back, Sanchez wants to make sure somebody is held accountable.
"I will do whatever it takes cause that's not right," he said. "Cause who knows how many other people are victims that went to that car wash that day that are just letting it slide by. That's not right."
Sanchez did file a police report. He's also been talking with his bank about how he can prevent card cloning in the future. He says it will take 30 days to get back the $500 that he lost.
