Our man ordered waffles, but paid for tools of war

After the beep, I again described my case and left my name, hometown, and telephone number. I made the call at 11 a.m. on Dec. 21 – almost six months ago.

The FBI has not yet responded to that call.

In fairness to the FBI, there is no proof that this instance of credit card fraud is in any way connected to Al Qaeda. (But it would, nonetheless, be of interest to the Saudis to know that someone in their capital city is obtaining such equipment. US Central Command, with thousands of US troops based near Riyadh and already on alert for possible terror attacks, might also find this information useful.)

The rifle-scope fraud is significant in broader terms as well. It is a clear illustration of how easy it is for anyone – including Al Qaeda terrorists – to use credit card fraud via the Internet to purchase quasi-military technology and ship it risk-free to operatives in key locations around the world, according to Internet fraud experts.

In early December, a federal grand jury in New York returned an indictment of three men accused of bilking various credit card companies out of roughly $150,000, according to federal court documents.

Press reports quoting the FBI put the total fraud closer to $1 million.

According to the court documents in the New York case, the three men created a shell company and then applied for and obtained credit cards with high credit limits. They then used the cards to transact fake purchases from the shell company, pocketing the proceeds, and later defaulting on their credit card bills.

In the night-vision scope transactions, the criminals used stolen credit card account information to pay for the scopes and then used the account holder's identity to ship the equipment to another country. Should these scopes be used in a terror attack in Saudi Arabia and then recovered by police, purchase and shipping documents would lead investigators straight to me rather than the criminal network involved.

One lingering mystery about the case is the identity of the Internet merchant who sold the scopes.

Fraud investigators at my credit card company say that since they got their money back they are not interested in further investigation.

The fraudulent credit card transactions were processed by a company called Ccnow.com, which acts as a middleman for Internet merchants.

When I contacted the Delaware-based company, an official refused to identify the merchant who had sold "me" the rifle scopes.

"But this was fraud," I said. "You must be required to maintain business records."

Lorenzo Anderson, an e-commerce consultant at Ccnow, said the company has a policy of destroying all transaction records after six months – even in instances of known fraud.

"You will never know who the supplier was," Mr. Anderson said. "You would know if you placed the order yourself. But if you didn't place it yourself you would never know because (in fraud cases) we just give the money back and we end things right there."

Ccnow says it has a confidentiality agreement with Internet merchants. Such an agreement, in effect, also serves as a firewall that could protect merchants who might either knowingly or unknowingly facilitate fraudulent purchases and shipments.

Where does the case stand now? A senior FBI official contacted recently by a Monitor editor promises an agent will call me soon.

Meanwhile, the next time I want a warm, crispy waffle, I think I'll just pay cash.

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