Making half a billion dollars disappear

Levy had vowed his store will stay open, but he said in an April 6 blog post that he will be stepping down from the day-to-day activities of running Hank Lee's Magic Factory and will leave that to his employees. Of course, he may have to do that, anyway. He is looking at possible jail time, though due to a plea agreement, prosecutors aren't going to try to put him away forever.


If it weren't so sad, capitalone this might be a funny story. After all, the owner of a magic shop in Boston took a customer's credit card and made half a million dollars disappear.
But looking deeper, it's really the story of a man who caused himself and his friends and family a lot of pain.
Hank Lee's Magic Factory in Medford, Mass., has been something of a landmark -- for magicians, at least -- in the greater Boston area since 1975. According to a 1982 Boston Globe feature, Harry Levy, 61, the owner, got into magic way back in 1959. So this is a well established business with an owner-magician who, by all accounts, was a reputable pillar of the community capitalone.

But Levy pulled an elaborate trick on a customer and made his own reputation disappear.
According to the Boston Globe, Levy recently pleaded guilty to making over $500,000 in unauthorized transactions on a customer's capitalone credit card.


The Globe reported that Levy was charged with making 134 capitalone transactions over the course of nearly two years on a wealthy Texas customer's American Express card. This went on until apparently the cardholder said, "Hey, wait a minute…"
And I guess that's what it's really like to be rich. To go two years and not notice that you've had half a million dollars stolen.

Levy had vowed his store will stay open, but he said in an April 6 capitalone blog post that he will be stepping down from the day-to-day activities of running Hank Lee's Magic Factory and will leave that to his employees. Of course, he may have to do that, anyway. He is looking at possible jail time, though due to a plea agreement, prosecutors aren't going to try to put him away forever.
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