A friend of mine who lives in France these days told me a story that had happened to a friend of hers. This woman had one of those French credit cards with a withdrawal limit of 2,500 guilders, irrespective of one's balance. She kept this credit card in her purse in her bag. While shopping, she suddenly noticed the loss of her bag. She was in doubt whether her bag had been stolen or whether she left it behind somewhere by accident. However, she could not find the bag in any of the places she had been. Thinking of the high withdrawal limit on her credit card, she immediately made a phone call to freeze her account. In the meantime, no money had disappeared from her account. Furthermore, she reported the loss of her bag and its contents. At the end of that same afternoon, the police phoned her back: Her bag had been recovered. Most of her possessions were still in it. Even her purse was still in the bag, but the money and the credit card had been removed from it.

The woman was told she could collect the bag and its contents at the police station the following morning at 9 a.m.

The following morning the woman went to the police station in question, at the other end of town. The policemen knew nothing about a retrieved bag or indeed, a phone call. When the woman returned home, she found her entire house ransacked. The phone call had not come from the police, but from the thieves, who had seized their chance and made good use of her absence.