What was this bank scam Brad?
Someone left their drivers license behind at the theater. They looked nothing like me, but I was still able to use it to open a checking account with $100 cash. I got a social security number by picking a random person in the U.S., calling them up, and talking them out of their SSN. The school's library had a reverse phone directory that I used to find the other random person, since there was no useful internet back then.
Another person at the theater left their checkbook behind and it had been sitting under the counter for months. I took that too and wrote myself a couple checks for $500 each, then deposited them into "my" account. I checked my balance on an ATM and the money was in there. So I took the maximum for the day, which was $400. Then next day I took another $400 from a different ATM. And then the last day I took the rest ($300) out.
I'm not sure if I could have gotten away with depositing more of the lady's checks. For all I know, they had cleared and she wouldn't notice the missing money for weeks. But I was too paranoid to try making any more deposits. I guess it didn't occur to me to make fake deposits from the ATM machine. I think this might have been my first experience with even using an ATM machine or owning an ATM card, so I must have not realized that you were able to make deposits from the ATM. Otherwise, I might have gotten another $1,000 or two from it.
I was extra paranoid about which ATMs I used. One was in a convenience store that had no cameras. The other was inside a downtown building and didn't have any cameras I could see. I wore a cap and sunglasses, just to appear extra suspicious.
