A few years ago, my wife made a mistake and left her purse in her class room as she went out for a smoke break - while it was a pretty poor decision to leave her purse unattended, this was a class of about 10 students that she thought she could trust. As she was driving back home, she realized she didn't have any money for the toll to cross over the bridge - which should not have been the case. Luckily the toll booth clerk let her through and my wife really didn't think much about it other than that she may have just not had money on her after all.
Later that evening we get a call from Chase asking about a string of purchases on her credit card - panic mode sets in and she realizes that one of her credit cards is missing. Luckily, my wife puts the phone on speaker mode so I can hear the full details of the conversation - and the Chase rep goes through the list of locations the card was used that day. I take note of all the locations, times and dollar amounts.
With this information in hand, we both headed to the first store on the list, a GameStop located about 10 minutes from the school, and the first purchase attempt happened 15 minutes after school ended - the culprit wasted no time. We speak to the manager of the GameStop who understands the situation and is eager to help, but only with the presence of the police. We call up the police and are able to explain everything that has happened, that we want to file a report, and that we are on location of one of the stores who has the camera footage already loaded if someone could come out. We waited about 45 minutes and finally a patrol car shows up.
We start the process of explaining what has happened so far, that we have the full list of locations and times - and just need their help to be able to positively identify the thief on camera. They agree and we are able to access the back video room to attempt to identify the person. Sadly, GameStop (at least this location) had really poor recordings and it was hard to have a 100% confirmation - it could've been one of two classmates and we weren't certain. The next location was a Target, literally around the corner. We went over there, with the two police officers, who went to speak to their security office. Unlike GameStop, we had to wait outside until they had loaded the exact time - I guess to prevent us from seeing any other information/transactions. It turns out that Target had a security system that can take the credit card number used, automatically go to not only the right time, but right checkout aisle and show close ups of the person AND the card being used. One press of a button and the video was burnt to a DVD for the police officers to take back as evidence.
In the end the class mate was trying to buy Playstation 3s to be able to sell, so she could pay off the fines that she received for committing identity theft when she was a minor.... She received 6 months in one county for the theft of the card, then another 8 months for using the card in a different county. Additionally her mom was arrested since they noticed that she had a warrant out for her arrest so they just took care of that one as well.