Homegrown
identity theft strikes Linfield student
Katie Paysinger
For the Review

After a student’s Linfield ID card was stolen and her meal plan used, all students now must have photo identification when purchasing products through Sodexo.
Sodexo employees have always been required to ask for a Linfield ID when students make purchases from them, but most employees become familiar with students and will accept ID numbers without it, Bill Masullo, general manager of Dining Services, said. Not anymore.
Sophomore Marianne O’Neal lost her card in early April and reported it missing to Linfield Campus Safety. The office then deactivated her card.
Unbeknownst to O’Neal, only its ability to access the residence halls was disabled.
O’Neal’s friend, sophomore Abby Lee, found O’Neal’s card at an off-campus location. After she brought both her old deactivated card and her new card to Dining Services, O’Neal was told she only had a small amount of money left on her meal plan.
Surprised, she asked for a print out detailing her account history and discovered that someone had memorized her old card’s ID number and was using it to purchase food on campus.
“When you report [your card as] lost and they say it’s deactivated, I always thought that meant it was fully deactivated,” O’Neal said.
Hoping to catch the culprit, she went to Campus Safety once again for help in stopping the person from continuing to use her money.
Campus Safety told O’Neal it had never seen a case such as this and didn’t know what to do. She was transferred to Masullo in Dining Services.
Masullo refunded O’Neal all the money that was stolen and began requiring that photo identification be shown to purchase food through Sodexo — the ID numbers are no longer valid by themselves.
“You develop a relationship with people,” Masullo said of Sodexo employees and the students they interact with daily. “In good faith, you extend the courtesy [of only accepting their ID number]. It’s too bad someone took advantage of that.”
Masullo said he hoped students would see that enforcing this policy isn’t really an inconvenience, but that the employees are actually looking after the
students in ensuring they are who they say they are when they use their declining balance dollars.
“We are going back to the expected standard of the college,” he said. “Now that we know what can happen.”
O’Neal said she hopes this doesn’t happen to any other students. “I just feel like students shouldn’t be able to get away with this,” she said.