By Patric Hedlund, Editor The Mountain Enterprise
In our Page One story this week we report that Pilot Flying J stores in California and its customers appear to be the targets of a tidy scam that few seem interested in prosecuting, but for which we all end up paying.
As a journalist, it is fascinating to report about a scam that fits like an organically evolved parasite into the nooks and crannies of our financial ecosystem, blending in so seamlessly that it is almost invisible. But as a citizen, it is appalling to see the functional breakdown, once again, of the networks of trust that our financial system relies upon.
After the trillions of dollars of financial larceny that took place on Wall Street over the past five years with only a couple of token prosecutions, perhaps it is of little surprise and less interest to the public that another form of white collar theft is occurring right under our noses. This one, taking place at our doorstep in Lebec, is estimated to reap a trivial $4.8 million dollars a year—taken out of all of our pockets.
No one appears to bother to report it to law enforcement—not the credit card holder, not the credit card companies and rarely the merchants who end up paying the bill. The merchants deduct it from their taxes as a loss and charge all of us a little more for gasoline at the pump to make up for it. Sgt. James Anderson of L.A. County Sheriff’s fraud division in Santa Clarita nails it: “If you don’t report it, it never happened.”
What that means in our squeaky-wheel society is that law enforcement agencies working on tight budgets with reduced personnel have no incentive to allocate too-scarce law enforcement resources to something that ‘never happened.’
a scam that fits
like an organically evolved parasite
into the nooks and crannies of our financial ecosystem,
blending in so seamlessly that it is almost invisible
The fraud we outline in today’s report is nearly too complicated to prosecute under existing California laws. Worse, perhaps, the payoff for such a prosecution can appear meaningless. Assembly Bill 109 “realignment” virtually decriminalizes theft not involving violence or breaking into a home, in practice reducing sentences to a few months in county jail, regardless of the volume of the theft. The criminals are evading detection while opportunistically diverting streams of revenue—raising prices, jolting inflation and the federal deficit. No wonder vampire tales have caught the popular imagination. They dwell amongst us.
Citizens like Heide Ploen and Richard Kittel are on the right track for wanting to blow the whistle on what is really happening. Now each of us needs to take the extra step to inform law enforcement when it occurs. Accurate tracking can lead to new strategies to force credit card companies to become part of the solution. It is time to drive a stake into the heart of credit card fraud.
To report credit card fraud
•L.A. County Sheriff 661-255-1121
•Kern County Sheriff 661-861-3110
•Kern County residents may also use
www.kernsheriff.com
click ‘online reporting’
This is part of the September 14, 2012 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.
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