Last Monday night, while watching “24,” I received a call from a guy, speaking with an Indian accent, who claimed to work for Hewlett-Packard. He said they were checking on a computer purchased in my name. He asked me if I had a credit card ending in a certain four digits, and I told him I did. He read my billing address. It was correct.

But I was really really suspicious. Would he just continue asking me to verify information? 

I told him I needed to check on some information, and would call him back. Could he give me his number? He did. As our conversation concluded, I sensed some frustration in his voice. 

Then I called Discover and reported the matter. They looked up our charges, and the last five charges were not ours. About $2000 worth. Two were for computers, probably laptops (since they were under $1000)–one from HP, one from Toshiba. Someone opened a Yahoo! Wallet account (which a Discover security woman said was probably a test to see if the card number worked). There were two other purchases–five, altogether.

Discover shut down our account, transferred all account activity (minus the five fraudulent charges) to a new account, and sent us new cards, which arrived Saturday. So we’re back in business. 

As for that HP guy who called? I know why he sounded frustrated. He thought I didn’t believe him. And I didn’t. But if he hadn’t called, we wouldn’t have caught the fraud that early, and many more charges would undoubtedly have been made. Because whoever had our credit card info (and we have no idea how they got it), they were in a spending spree.

Note to HP: for jobs like that, don’t use someone with a foreign accent.