Owner Unknown

An essay by

Drew Skiftun

As a credit card fraudster or carder, my job had certain perks. Mostly material pleasures and luxurious accommodations, the bling of dedicated carding. People who saw my jewelry and flashy Vegas living assumed that was the motivation. I understand how someone sweating forty hours a week to pay the bills would think that having these things is everything, believe as they might have, I never felt that way. My carding game experience proved that hard work pays off; the Tom Ford suits didn’t just appear in my closet. My laundry was dry cleaned, and my wrist glinted in the Vegas lights; that was the prize, but it was the actual work I loved.  The Versace silk shirts and neatly pressed slacks were tools, looking the part for a big money scam. I would say, “It takes money to make money.” I always told myself the money I scammed was money I earned. The wardrobe reminded me I was someone who belonged, someone who wasn’t out of place buying a dozen different Stefano Ricci ties at once. What the speculators didn’t see is I did work for my money. No different than the president of a bank or the CEO of Walgreens, I earned my money; carding was my job; I had a schedule; I had a bottom line, and I was responsible for doing it every day

Once I convinced my mark I was a millionaire through my appearance, they didn’t mind bending policy and punching in the card number I had embossed on a Visa blank; at most, they would ask for identification, and I’d give them my fake ID. Someone wearing esoteric Italian patterns is just more trustworthy; that’s what society has taught us; gym shorts and a wife-beater do not garner trust. A double-knotted silk tie does.  As do Dolce and Gabbana shades, made in Italy, shipped across the pond and placed in a glass case on the Las Vegas strip. With the casual swipe of a card dug out of a mailbox in a gated Summerlyn community, they were mine. Something to don in the Vegas night to block the neon rays of the city. Something to cover my pin-sized pupils when playing a rouse to get over on a sucker. Yet, no signs from a cosmic power or passing of judgment. The sunglasses, just as ill-gotten as the watch. All these years later, when I squint just right through the Italian lenses, I can make out the palms of the desert, but they too are far removed from here in Idaho, where I live now.

With all the beaming fluorescents in Vegas, nothing ever shined brighter to me than slicing open a Wells Fargo envelope containing a new debit card that I dug out of a mailbox or finding all the data to apply for an Amex Gold Card.  I wouldn’t let those lights on the Strip get to me like the average twenty-something male with money to blow would have. Instead, I used my nights to collect financial data from mailboxes. That was the allure of Vegas to me. Deciding on Gucci or Versace was a burden; cleaning out mailboxes for data was a pleasure. I didn’t care about the tables, the machines, the clubs, anything. I knew I could make money with my scams, enough to live the Vegas dream, and I did every night. I was once told “Do what you love, and the money will come,” ain’t that the truth? The high was what mailboxes the Benz took me to, never the Benz.

I believe that diversity is a crucial component of most good things. Since there isn’t a handbook or a business plan to mimic in the carding world, I had only my best judgment to work off, picking and choosing what I thought would keep me moving forward. A one-trick pony in the fraud world is slow money at best. I had my hands in two or three scams at any time. On crisp desert nights, I was prowling gated neighborhoods for what lay behind the flip door of a mailbox. If they were locked, an eight-inch pry bar was a simple fix. When the Nevada desert turned to a blistery day, if I wasn’t running through credit limits at the Forum, it was time for my craft. Being able to generate active card numbers opened the door to unlimited possibilities. 

Most of the cards I cloned were from data that my partner and I skimmed from a 7-Eleven in Henderson. We had copies of hundreds of cards at any given time, ready to go, and data for thousands. The clones' only purpose, the reason we had them, was to spend them, find out which ones would approve or decline. The Fashion Show Mall on the strip was only a five-minute drive from where I stayed, give or take, depending on traffic. Usually, within ten minutes, I’d be valeted and in the mall. The Burberry watch wasn’t even something I intended on buying. I had already swiped the card and was pumped it worked and rushed to swipe it again before a text notification could be sent to the actual cardholder; once a card approved, I always swiped it until it didn’t. I already had a Nordstrom bag full of Issey Miyaki and Armani cologne when I arrived at the jewelry counter where I could take another swipe. I never knew what a card would have for available credit, so I always did the second go for a little less than the first. Surrounded by watches all costing over a grand, the steel Burberry was the one I pointed out to the lady behind the counter.  I made the sale easy, no small talk, no trying it on or looking it over, just “Yeah that one, I’ll take it.”

Of the relics from my past, only a handful remain. The shoes of old must not know like the watch does. Though purchased in the same manner, they are no different, cordial enough so no one was ever the wiser that the swiped card was a forgery. My Cartier Tank watch would have cost someone making $40 an hour about a hundred hours of their life. For me, it was the slide of a card. The Ferragamo belt, soft and thick leather with a dust cover just for its closet time, another ten hours. The thing is, the judgment never comes from the shoes. I can slide the white Jordans on like any other pair of sneakers, and my conscience never has anything to say. When I look down upon the flat white laces, I’m brought back to stepping out of my Benz at the Aria valet. My Vegas era when my shoes never glided over anything but freshly buffed floors and never said a word about how they got there. Maybe someday I’ll be greeted at the Palazzo again, and they will be there for me to stroll the carpet as just another square, not the stone-cold carder I was before. 

Before the prison term, none of these things meant much to me. The sunglasses were just something found with all the other designer shades, something lined on the dresser top with the others. Something filling the space between the Dior Sauvage and jewelry box. When buying each pair of shoes, they seemed unique, something to complete an outfit. The day after the outfit was worn, they were simply returned to their box and essentially retired to my shoe wall. An entire wall of red, orange, and black shoe boxes in my quaint little suite directly off the Vegas strip. The Burberry is probably the most insignificant watch of my carder days. A plain Burberry watch not even a tenth of the cost of the Breitling. The only thing that stood out about the Burberry was its lack of jewels or gold and how tiny the face is in comparison to the others. Yet it was the one that has made it these years to remind me, “It's time to get right with God.”

I was always realistic about my carding life, I knew running scams all day and committing more felonies than hours in the day meant that prison was imminent. It isn’t about not getting caught because I knew I would. It was about making the most of my hustle until I did. You never know when it’s your day, when your card is being pulled. That’s how these things, the watch, shoes, and sunglasses became the relics they are today. They were simply the accessories that complemented the outfit on my last day of scamming. The day that it all ended and the lush fruits of my labor became filler in an Ada County evidence locker.

I think it’s hard for squares to wrap their heads around the fact that a carder operates everyday knowing that a carding life, filled with felonies, can only lead to prison. That’s why love is the only explanation. People cut their wrists over love, so really, jail doesn’t even seem that horrible. Knowing that handcuffs are in your future leaves you with two choices. You can let paranoia take you over, allowing it to show in all your actions, like the people you see and know something shady is afoot, commonly labeled as “tweeker’s” or “suspect”. The ones who are meant for the game take to it like fish to water, the euphoria of the con takes control, and there is no room for paranoia. Knowing that arrest was inherent never had a hold of my actions. It was just something I knew I would address when it happened. 

When my suite at the overrated Grove in downtown Boise was raided hours after my arrest, Idaho detectives had a glimpse into what I had going for myself. Not just the lavish wardrobe hanging atop mediocre hotel hangers made of wood with a fading finish, or the jewelry and shoes I had acquired through my scamming, but the tools of the trade as well. Hundreds of prepaid Visa cards were stacked in the bathroom, washed of the numbers printed on them, ready for encoding and embossing. The living room was set up for full production of cloned credit cards, with a laptop and encoder ready to go.

It’s a stiff reality check when you find yourself realizing today is your day. Just because I knew it was going to happen, it never becomes something you can be fully desensitized to. It’s a time when not just reality comes crashing but also emotion from within, knowing that all the wrongs you ran are now calling in their bill. Interrogating detectives would love for you to believe that such a time is when you atone. Even with a conscience you can’t. This is the time to keep your mouth shut, smile in the booking picture and demand your county sack lunch.

I never thought I was pushing my cons too hard or too fast; maybe that had been dampened every time I listened to the snapping sound of PVC Visas stacked in piles of ten on my nightstand. In hindsight, it was more like too much for simple Boise, Idaho: My mindset and outward appearance still stuck in L.A. and Vegas. I thought I was being mindful with my appearance on my last day of scamming. I knew I couldn’t be stepping out and showing off like Vegas. Vegas is likely the only place on the planet with no stigma or perception on what someone looking fresh out of a Bruno Mars video is up to. In Vegas, that look is as likely for a school principal as it is a drug dealer. I should have stayed in the desert because regardless of why or how, I was just too much for sleepy Boise.

I was away in either interrogation or booking so I can only assume the detectives documenting the suite of its contents took on some sort of jealousy or self-righteousness, or maybe they were just doing their jobs. As they tore apart what was my life and passion, I’m sure it was evident that they were handling a wardrobe worth several years’ salary to them. I was proud of what I had created. I knew that even though I was finally had, my carding work was an accomplishment. I had done what I had set out to do, getting one over on the financial system day in and day out. When the paperwork was filed and funneled to my lawyer, it was clear the detectives had something to say. Everything in the suite documented, giving me credit, of course, for anything that they could push a felony conspiracy charge with, the encoder, the cards, the laptop. That’s all, though. Somehow, they felt that everything else in the Grove suite couldn’t be mine. Labeling the small treasures as “Owner Unknown.”

“Owner Unknown!” I assume this was how the detectives thought they could do some kind of justice, trying to push the belief that crime doesn’t pay. The thing is, “owner unknown” is hitting the nail on the head. Carding is engrained with being someone new in every con. Being someone in the morning, the next in the evening, your true self as seldom as possible, and by night collecting data for a new identity to keep the cycle going. It is only a mystery who I was when I purchased any given item. I believe that every bit of time and sweat I put into carding was work. Still, when I could be “anyone,” it was impossible to establish myself as “someone.” “Owner Unknown” helped me realize that.

Old news for me now as I navigate through life just like any other square. It was a passion I let go. I focus now on being a better person for the ones I love, guiding my son through his early life, showing him who I am now that I can be present daily in his life. Still, I look at the watch, and it tells me, “Time to get right with God.” What does it know?

Drew Skiftun is an Idaho native who writes nonfiction about the modern American counterculture: hookers, con men, gang bangers and dope dealers (a demographic he believes to be underrepresented in contemporary literature). He currently is editing his memoir chronicling his times as a fraudster in Las Vegas and Southern California. When not writing, he enjoys Newports, alien documentaries, and golfing with his son.