At the recommendation of a friend, we set out to see Mark Wahlberg’s latest movie, Pain & Gain Tuesday night. There’s a great deal at Stone Theaters in Indian Trail, NC to get in for $5. So for me and Sara it was $20 for two movie tickets, two small drinks, and two small popcorns. Hard to beat that for a newly released movie at the theater.
As a side bar, Stone Theaters is incredibly nice. We’ve long visited Stonecrest off of Rea Rd. in Charlotte, but with this new theater being so much closer to where I live, I’ve begun going there for every movie. Not only is it closer, but it’s very nice, from the cleanliness, to the service, to the quality of the theater. I highly recommend it, if you’ve not been there yet.
Now on to the movie. For a review, really all I can ask is what? The fact that this is based off of a true story makes it comedic in a sense, though the fact that these crimes actually took place is a bit disturbing. Ultimately, after reading the actual notes for this case, the movie leaves a bit more to be desired. For one, there’s some pretty large factual differences in the movie, and the timeline of the movie is a bit off. I won’t spoil the story for anyone that plans to see it, but there are discrepancies in how the movie portrays the events.
Overall, it was an enjoyable flick, with some action and comedy sprinkled throughout. It certainly is not one for younger kids and I’m not sure how many people I went with actually enjoyed it. I thought it was decent, not exceptional or anything spectacular, but for $5 it was perfectly enjoyable.
On to my favorite part of the night. I received an email around midnight from Bank of America detailing irregular activity on my account. I had recently made a rather large purchase, though not really out of the ordinary for my account, and not overly large, certainly not enough to cause concern. Regardless, I assumed that’s what the email was about. I checked my account balance briefly, saw that I did have a fairly small charge, and figured I’d check closer today.
Oddly enough, I had forgotten about it this morning, assuming it was not a huge ordeal. I received a text from my mom stating that my credit card had been used in three purchases in Pennsylvania and that Bank of America had called to report the fraud. Now we’re getting somewhere.
So I called Bank of America, went through their rigamarole or proving that I was indeed the one and only Gregory Phillip Ellis. Fantastic. Then the questions began, “Ok, there’s a charge in Pennsylvania for $205 at a Wal-Mart, was that you?” Well, of course not, I’ve never even been to Pennsylvania and don’t particularly see any reason to ever go. She mentioned some other charges made in Pennsylvania, obviously none of them related to me.
So, my card has now been canceled and my account completely removed from association with my online account. I’m not exactly sure how many charges were made or the exact damage, but of course Bank of America and Visa are going to take care of those issues for me, as one would expect them to do. I find it particularly perplexing that both mine and my parents cards were compromised, on the same night, in the exact same state.
To me, there’s only two possible theories. Either the person used a magnetic card reader on some device in this town that I visited, using my Bank of America card to pay. This is unlikely, because I rarely use my card, and it seems that the card would have been used closer to home. This seems pretty much like a database infiltration and dump. It’s disappointing to me, though not surprising, that Bank of America would not alert their customers of a database intrusion in a timely manner.
However, these are only my assumptions and my possible assumed disappointment is negated by the fact that Bank of America alerted me to these charges, is taking corrective action, and made sure that my card was denied any further charges that evening. For that, I’m certainly thankful.
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