I left the bank a little while ago and just said goodbye to the County Sheriff’s officer who was at my home. It seems that over the weekend, some non-God fearing miscreant got the information from my debit card and decided to go shopping at Walmart…. In Orlando, Florida.
While I caught it early and called the bank to close the account, they were still able to get away with about $89 and cause me to lose some of my valuable work time having to file reports and sign affidavits.
The money will be back in my account in a couple days and I will have a new card in a week or so. It could certainly be worse. Problem is, it does not affect just me. Speaking with the PCPD officer, he said the department has taken many reports of this type and many of them have been because of usage at Walmarts and larger grocers in Florida.
He said many people have suffered losses in the HUNDREDS of dollars. Fortunately, I didn’t. 
While I’m still not sure where they got the info off my card, which was manually keyed-in and not swiped, it seems to me that one of the companies that I use that debit card to make payments to has had a breech somewhere. Obviously it can and does happen, and I may never know where the breech was.
All things considered, it could have been worse, but I planned ahead a little. This is what I do, so please take note…
I have two accounts at the same bank that are connected together so I am able to transfer money between the accounts at will. I only have a debit card set up with one of them and usually only have enough cash in that account to cover the checks that I write and the purchases that I make. This way, when something like this happens, they can get very little. Since it takes about 30 seconds to transfer between accounts (or about 5 minutes on my Crackberry phone…), it is not much of a hassle.
Unfortunately, since I had a couple transactions pending, they were able to get almost $90. But, all things considered, that is a small amount.
My suggestion to you is to be very careful and monitor your balances closely. Both of the banks I use frequently send me balance alerts every morning so that I can stay on top of things. If your bank does the same, I would suggest signing up for it if you have not already.
Note: after I wrote this post, I found this info online from the NWI Times. Seems I am not the only one….
Helping to keep you keep your finances safe,