Terry Foster Was Robbed, Learned A Hard Lesson

By Terry Foster
@terryfoster971

I never saw the person that robbed me Monday afternoon. They did not break into my house. They did not break into my car and they did not knock me over the head and run.

I got robbed over the Internet to the tune of nearly $500. Police call it a cybercrime or Internet fraud; I call it a robbery because it is the same thing.

You work hard. You earn money for your family and somebody gets information, punches a few buttons and they are able to buy new shoes, pet supplies and grab a few meals. That is what the person or persons did. They did not clean out my account but they got the run of it for a few hours some place in Florida.

I felt the same way when someone broke into my house and took all my coins out of my bedroom when I was a kid. We were all devastated when a man attempted to steal my grandmother's purse in New York City.

I was really angry when someone stole my current wife Adrienne's stereo system when we were dating. I accused an old boyfriend I never met. That is sort of what we guys do.

People are robbed all the time. I just feel strange because it has not happened to me much.

I wanted to blame myself. My card remained in my possession but I believe I made a mistake somewhere. I was recently in Las Vegas. Maybe I slipped the card into the wrong ATM machine and somebody got my information.

My banker told me that restaurant employees have been known to rub the numbers on a piece of paper and sell the numbers to others.

"There are bad people in the world," he told me while filing a fraud claim.

I am slow to online purchases but I've gotten a Pay Pal account the last year and have ventured into online purchases. My daughter Celine is more advanced to the modern era than I am. She makes most of her purchases online but usually uses gift cards that are given to her by me or her mom.

I slipped up somehow and beat myself up last night trying to figure it out.

The good news is I was taken advantage of by the Internet and I was saved by it. My bank sent me a text and said there was possible fraud to my account. That happened during the final minutes of the Valenti and Foster Show.

I viewed my account online, saw purchases I did not make and called immediately. They asked a bunch of questions to make sure I was who I claimed to be and went into my local branch to clean it up. And I get my money back.

"Don't worry about it too much," the bank representative who guided me through my ordeal said. "It happens to a lot of people."

Welcome to the new world.

(Foster can be reached at Terry.Foster@cbsradio.com. Twitter: TerryFoster971.)