Cat gets credit card or owner commits fraud? You make the call.

The Internets are enjoying the great joke of some lady's cat in Australia getting a credit card. Some enjoy the ridiculousness of a cat with a credit card, some the seeming incompetence of the company issuing it. Many takes on the article leave the impression that the bank issued the card to the cat with no prompting. There is much tsk-ing about how the bank should have done the proper background checking before issuing the card.

The real story is that the owner of the cat applied for the credit card in the cat's name. In fact the card was a second one on the same account as the owner. The owner fraudulently created the cat identity and the bank followed its regular procedures and issue the card. Yes, she should have been notified the card was issued, I know that anytime something occurs on my credit card accounts I get plenty of notifications. Yes, the particular bank was fooled by this woman. I probably wouldn't bank with them. But if I was the bank I would go after this lady for putting fraudulent information on the application as a demonstration of how some of their crime prevention systems do work. Too bad they won't -

Although the bank will not be taking legal action against Ms Campbell, the spokeswoman said the person signing the application form should not give misleading or fraudulent information.

"It is also important to remember that for an application to be approved, the customer must sign to confirm the information they have given is true and is not misleading or fraudulent," she said.

She also tried and succeeded with the same stunt with the electric company. They had a much more droll take on the whole thing.

A Red Energy spokeswoman said no responsibility rested with the secondary card holder and there was no problem with having a pet's name on a customer's electricity bill.

"We never intended for people to sign up their pets as secondary account holders but we respect our customers' wishes," she said. "However, we doubt that their pets will be able to take full advantage of the service."

I wonder when she will get some jail time.