RIYADH, 12 May — Following the recent scandal involving a woman who allegedly had her ATM card stolen and money withdrawn from her account from a cashier at the Tamimi-Safeway supermarket in Riyadh, Arab News was contacted by Shirley Ashton, an expatriate who experienced a similar incident.
Mrs. Ashton recalled: "My bank in the UK, alerted by the fact that our account had become suddenly and dramatically overdrawn, contacted my husband to bring to his attention the balance on our joint account. When my husband asked for the details, he knew immediately that the entries did not relate to either of our shopping expeditions. It was obvious that the card had been stolen and used to purchase goods on a mad spending spree."
Mr. and Mrs. Ashton’s account had been debited on no fewer than 11 separate occasions to purchase items from many different stores in Jeddah.
The total amount the thieves spent in just two days was a staggering SR41,616.
The purchases were made at a number of stores, but one was visited three times on the same day.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this case is the fact that these stores demonstrated complete negligence by accepting a card that did not belong to the person using it.
Did they not notice anything suspicious, like the forged signature?
It is increasingly becoming clear that many of the Kingdom’s stores do not train properly their staff members in being able to recognize false transactions. If such a training process does in fact exist, judging from the case of Mrs Ashton it evidently is not as good as it should be.
Mrs. Ashton continued: "I can pinpoint, with 99 percent accuracy, when my card was stolen, as I live on a Western-style compound which I leave only on Thursday mornings to do my shopping. I can also recall just when it happened."
"While paying for my groceries and tipping the boy packing my shopping, I looked down and saw that my wallet containing my credit and debit cards was open on the counter. My card had been stolen either by the cashier on the till or the person immediately behind me in the queue."
Mrs. Ashton has been living in Jeddah for over 15 years and said that she and other expatriates have always believed that the Kingdom was free of such crime and the criminals that perpetrate them.
By printing this article, Arab News aims to make its readers — Saudi nationals and expatriates alike — aware that such crime does indeed exist, and that while uncommon in comparison to the West, it is nevertheless something they should be on their guard against.
Mrs. Ashton did not want to name the supermarket where she lost her card because, when she reported her card missing, the official there was very concerned and sympathetic, and proved eager to be of assistance.
