NC woman charged more than $2,000 after restaurant posts her credit card online

A North Carolina woman is facing more than $2,000 in new charges after a restaurant posted her credit card online and others used it to make fraudulent purchases.

Rhonda Deaver said she accidentally left her card behind last week after paying her tab at one of her regular haunts — Smith’s Cafe in Kinston, about 80 miles southeast of Raleigh.

Deaver told WRAL that before she realized she didn’t have her card, the restaurant posted photos of it — front and back — on a local Facebook group in hopes of locating the cardholder. Instead, the move prompted a number of unauthorized charges that Deaver may now be on the hook for.

“I couldn’t believe that they did that, but I might be responsible for all those charges,” she said.

“It had been used a whole lot,” she said. “(There were) a whole lot of declines but a whole lot that went through. I live on a fixed income, and there’s not extra money every month to cover those bills.”

She said she’s still in the process of disputing the charges and that the account had been closed. It’s unclear whether any criminal investigation is occurring related to the incident.

There were more than 426,000 instances of credit card fraud in the U.S. in 2023, according to The Motley Fool.

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