It is a tough call and of course, I respect your decision. Surely, the credit card companies are pursuing these criminals to some extent...perhaps they decided that cases under a certain dollar amount don't warrant the use of their resources? Who knows.

Unrelated but similar in its bizarre-ness, I saw a short bit on some reality cop show where a woman caught a guy stealing her wallet on the beach. She basically hollered to the Beach Police patrolman who came over to assist and he told her that because he didn't witness the crime, she needed to place the guy under citizen's arrest (so she did, right there, in front of an actual peace officer). I thought citizen's arrests were for when the cops weren't around to do the job.

And I thought that "citizen's arrest" was something Gomer Pyle made up! ;-)

I think the producers of the 'reality' cop show were engaging in a little dramatic license ..... can you imagine if police officers only made arrests on crimes they witnessed? ..... or if anyone who reported a crime was told to go make a citicen's arrest? I agree, it's an item aptly labeled "bizarre-ness" ...

From my time on the Grand Jury, I can tell you that financial/credit theft took up probably 25% of our case time. And most of the "purps" were young and pretty poor criminals. When dim bulb stole a ladies purse and used one of the credit cards to order pizza every night for a week....sent to his apartment. Pizza Hut had the address on their computers. Not to hard to find this genius. We sent him up.....

Over here, the credit card company just automatically deals with it. It is so much easier! Thus, I can totally understand why you'd let them deal with it. I totally agree with the statement that it seems like their responsibility :).

I have been involved in retail credit card services most of my adult life. The grim fact is rather simple.
Actuarial logic. That's the math used to decide if the damage "risk" exceeds the mitigation cost by large enough a percent.

So if the % of loss is less than the cost of effective fixes? Why, it not unexpectedly stays broken of course.
After all- it's all J-dollars to the card companies.
It's only real dollars when WE pay for their poor practices. The gnarlier downside is that many of us are not lacking fault.
How many of us fully reconcile receipts to our statements? OR have a log list of direct withdrawals?
The inept stupidity of some card thieves as another comment shows- is actually understating it. But there's an increasing underground high tech crime wave. These yeggs are no dummies. Here's some current mass card theft tricks and how to beat them. Starting by reconciling card statements to receipts against charge slips. As in what the register receipt says compared to a separate charge slip- then compare the charge slip to the statement- you paid $12.95 on the slip you signed- the clerk voided it- re-rang it as $34.95 and many folks would have missed that scam.
How the clerk gets caught is left as a mental exercise for you ... HINT some one reconciling statements perhaps

Watching who's "shoulder surfing" your PIN is part of being self defensive. Do also understand that telephoto digicams ARE being used to simply capture the human readable card number you let show on your card as you are sliding it thru the slot or inserting it into the ATM! Then the perp to be has -your card number and PIN- makes up a "white card" in preparation to loot your account.

So if we reconcile statements- watch line of sight to our cards, watch for shoulder surfing we've taken a bite back .

But do not take my word as enough- research and protect yourself. DO press charges! That day in court sending a thief to their reward eventually will decimate the criminal pool.

Ah well- at least there is some chance of chargebacks etc recovering most of disputed amounts IF you reported the card issue BEFORE the charges were made.