How not to steal a credit card

In this latest installment in our series of posts aimed at helping potential criminals avoid the pitfalls of simple mistakes we will tackle the topic of stealing credit cards, with the help of this incident.  After all, at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to keeping people out of jail!

The first question to be answered when you are considering stealing a credit card is whether it is worth your time to steal the card.  This question is best answered by careful consideration of several factors, including: (1) the items you might be able to purchase with the card before the owner realizes it is compromised and cancels it.  (2) the time of day and the proximity to ways to use the card where ID won't be required, and (3) whether there are other sources of funding available to you.  If you have other sources of funding available, it is nearly always better not to steal the credit card.  If it is the middle of the night or you don't have places in mind where you could use the credit card without arousing suspicion, it is nearly always better to not steal the card.  In the case of David Weber, he was considering stealing from a parking garage late at night and he had no other source of funding.  He was close to a bar, but bars are known to ID people on occasion, and the owner of the vehicle was presumably going to discover the theft by the next morning.  In retrospect it is easy to say that he shouldn't have stolen the card, but the fundamental mistake he made wasn't in choosing to steal the card, it was in choosing how to use the card, which is our next topic.

The next question, assuming you decided to steal the credit card, is what to do with it.  While there are a number of options available to you, many of them don't make sense.  Stealing a credit card to use it as a coaster is probably not wise.  Stealing it to order online and have things shipped to your home is probably a bad option as the shipping info would lead right to you.  Using it to purchase items in a store where surveillance cameras would easily be able to identify you might not be so wise either.  The ideal situation in which to use a card is one in which there are no cameras and the person taking payment wouldn't feel obligated to ask for ID.  The larger a potential purchase the more likely the clerk is to ask for ID, so the ideal situation in which to use a stolen credit card is one in which the purchase price is low and the potential for getting caught using the card is low.  If you properly evaluated whether or not to steal a card in the first place, we presume that you have a good use in mind.  David Weber thought he would use his card to buy beer, which is a small purchase and bars may not require ID for payment of small amounts, and he did look old enough that they weren't likely to card him to see if he was underage.  Unfortunately for David, however, he neglected the last consideration.

The last thing to consider is whether you should use your card in the vicinity from which you stole it.  This is a complicated situation, as to use it farther from the source may arouse the suspicions of the credit card company, but to use it in the immediate area might arouse suspicion of locals who know that you are not the person listed on the card.  The ideal situation is to get far enough away from the source of the card to not run into people who know the card owner, but not so far that you arouse suspicion.  This is perhaps the trickiest part of stealing a credit card, and is the part where David failed.  He used the card in a bar near the parking garage from which he stole it, and, to his dismay, not only was the card owner's name recognized, but the card owner was the bartender to whom he gave the card!

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not saddened by such needless arrests, and we hope that you will learn from David Weber's poor example and either choose not to steal a credit card or at least choose to follow smarter practices when using stolen credit cards!