Our man ordered waffles, but paid for tools of war

All I wanted was a warm, crispy waffle. But I ended up sending a night-vision rifle scope to some unidentified criminal in Saudi Arabia.

Such are the realities of credit card fraud and identity theft in the Internet age.

Apparently, all it takes is a single credit card receipt from a quick breakfast in a hotel in Amman (or anywhere else), to provide a scam artist with enough information to purchase and ship the tools of assassination to a post office box in Riyadh.

Was this incident simply a case of an otherwise harmless Arabian ordering a weekend hunting accessory, or could it be the tip of another terrorist iceberg?

I must admit upfront that I have a vested interest in the answer to that question.

Both the purchase and shipping of the scopes were done under my name.

My worst fear is that "Warren Richey" may soon appear on an international watch list of suspected Al Qaeda supporters.

Did I mention that all I wanted was a warm, crispy waffle?

My story begins last fall during a trip to Jordan, where I had gone to write news stories following the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington.

Like anyone else traveling on business, I used a corporate credit card to pay for most of my expenses. I kept all the receipts and never lost my card.

But at some point, some one obtained my credit card number and its expiration date.

Transaction records reveal that the first attempted fraudulent purchase was made on the same day that I returned to the US. The $3,100 transaction for two Russian-made night-vision rifle scopes and a more high-tech miniature night-vision scope was refused because it exceeded the single-purchase limit on my card.

Roughly a month later, however, someone submitted a scaled-down version of the same order and it was accepted. According to my credit card company's fraud investigators, the order included one Russian night-vision rifle scope (a similar level of technology as night scopes used with deadly precision by US Marine Corps snipers during the Vietnam War), and a US-built range finder, an instrument that calculates the distance to a potential target.

Night-vision scopes are useful to soldiers because they illuminate and magnify a target in the dark without revealing the position of the potential shooter. The same technology has obvious utility for terrorists and assassins.

When the mysterious charges appeared on my credit card bill, I immediately notified the credit card company. They cancelled the charges and initiated the fraud investigation.

Then something really interesting happened.

One of my colleagues at The Christian Science Monitor, Jerusalem correspondent Nicole Gaouette, noticed similar unauthorized charges on her credit card statement.

She had passed through Amman a few weeks after me, and had eaten at the same hotel restaurant, where she paid the bill with her credit card.

Within a few weeks, someone used her account information to send a $1,800 US-made night-vision scope with infrared capability to an address in the United Arab Emirates. It was shipped under Nicole's name.

The fact that two people from the same US-based newspaper could become victims of the same type of credit card fraud seemed to suggest that a large-scale operation might be underway.

When I mentioned this to the fraud investigators at my credit card company, they agreed.

I called my local FBI office to report the crime. I briefly explained my case and was transferred to an extension with a telephone answering machine.

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