We've never had problems with credit card fraud until recently; but now, we, too, are victims Three weeks ago, while at a trade show, one of our Master Cards was compromised by someone who charged $3,000 worth of airline tickets on the card. Fortunately the early warning system caught the bogus charge and contacted us. Then we had trouble using the card ourselves.

The fact that we had to do this took valuable time away from our selling day, not to mention the aggravation and concern it caused us.

Yesterday, another one of our credit cards was placed on fraud alert because someone tried to make a $1,000 charge using it. When I called the credit card company, they told me that even though we managed our cards correctly, thieves are becoming very sophisticated. They said that our card information was probably obtained by someone using a video or cell phone camera in restaurants.

When we laid our card down on the table for the wait staff to use to pay the bill, someone probably walked by and photographed the card as it lay on the table. So we urge you to watch your cards as closely as you can and trust no one.