Sears & Identity Theft

Man, what a night! Last night my wife went to Sears at 8PM, to buy me a last minute Birthday gift. I wanted some new jeans and work shirt. She went to pay the cashier and during the transaction the cashier started giving out my wife's personal information to someone the cashier said was "security" over the phone. My wife asked her what was going on, but the cashier said not to worry. Then the cashier asked for a second piece of ID. My wife complied and the cashier read her credit card numbers over the phone as well. My wife started getting worried, this didn't seem right. She asked to talk to a manager, but the cashier agitatedly said, there's no manager on duty, and she should just, "go home." My wife came home and told me what happened. I got worried and called Sears Security Department and the security gal gets all panicky and tells me, "this isn't normal at all, call your credit card company - call the police." So I do and it turns out someone tried to charge $147.00 to our card from some remote location! We've been scammed. I first think it's the cashier whose scammed us, call back security after calling the police. Security says they talked to the cashier, and they don't feel the cashier is in on it. The security lady says it's a scam where a person with a cell phone calls a cashier, posing as security and requests all the customers information to make sure they aren't gonna pass a bad check or whatever. The cashier reads the info to the scam artist and then the scam artist boogies to a computer and begins charging the card or whatever. This sucks. Today we call Sears management to complain about the cashier and ask if they're gonna do some kind of internal investigation about my wife's identity theft from the night before. Management tells us too bad so sad, it's not their problem. We ask for the Sears Corporate number and they refuse to give it to us. Unsatisfied with the result of lower Sears store management, my wife calls Sears Corporate and finally gets connected to the head manager of the Sears store where the cashier gave out her personal information (Shoreline). The manager says she'll look into it and call us tomorrow.