Visa has this lame-@ss "visa-verified" program but large banks have programs equivalent to the Discover one. I use MBNA ShopSafe which is available to any MBNA card holder with no extra charge. The merchant is unable to tell the difference between a shopsafe generated CC# and a number on a physical card.

FWIW, I recently learned that there are companies out there that use your credit card number to build up a profile by correlating your purchases with the same card at "participating merchants" (like grocery stores, bookstores, etc). Got me thinking that ShopSafe and a magnetic strip writer would be a nice way to do one-time use numbers at stores too. As long as the cashiers never check that the card has the same number printed on it as the magstrip reader reports. Imagine trying to explain your way out of that...

PS - you might want to pursue filing a police report. It won't help this case, but with a documented police report in hand, you can get all the major credit reporting agencies to put a "fraud alert" on your files so that anytime someone tries to get new credit (new charge card or a car loan, etc) they will have to call you at your home phone# to confirm before opening a new line of credit. It ought to be a crime that you can't that protection until you've already had a problem. Those credit agencies have way too much power over citizen's lives.