How can you rack up $8K, and not notice $8K over time? Does he not check his statements?
And if it was in a "short period of time", how did the credit card company, NOT, put a stop to that right away? When they see electronic transactions happen like that way too frequently in a short period of time... they lock that card down, and contact the owner for fraud check. It puts up a red flag. No matter what bank I was with, I could not make more than 3-4 purchases at different places in less than a certain period of time (lets say 2 hours), let alone all at the same place before the bank called me. And it did not matter what bank or credit card I was using. They all would put a freeze and contact me. This is pretty much standard basic protection now-a-days.
Something is odd about the "ignorance" of the parent. And if the story was 100% kosher, which clearly it just can't be, then that is the worst credit card protection I have ever seen in today's financial society. Lemme know the name of them, so I know, NOT to do business with that bank.