Credit: Cody Duty/Houston Chronicle/AP Photo

It's possible that someone in Kentucky has been buying stuff with John Roberts's credit card.

The Supreme Court's chief justice has been traipsing around Washington, D.C., bemoaning to metro-area counter-workers that his credit-card info has been stolen, and that he now has to use cash.

First, it was a Starbucks barista, where Roberts stopped for coffee in suburban Maryland on Tuesday, before he heard arguments on California's Prop. 8 gay-marriage ban. Roberts typically uses a card, but a Starbucks employee told The Washington Post that Roberts, this time mentioned the apparent identity theft, after paying cash

Then it was a barbershop in D.C., where The Huffington Post overheard Roberts noting that the culprit evidently hailed from Kentucky.

A Supreme Court spokesperson confirmed to ABC's Ariane de Vogue that Roberts's credit-card numbers were used but did not supply any additional details.

While the Justice Department would not say whether it's looking into the apparent ID theft, stealing the credit-card info of the Supreme Court's chief justice is sort of like picking a fight with Suge Knight at a nightclub. Most would be wise to avoid it.

Credit-card and identity theft aren't so rare. In 2012, the Federal Trade Commission fielded 28,332 consumer complaints about credit-card fraud. Identity-theft was the FTC's number-one complaint last year, with 369,132 reports accounting for 18 percent of the FTC's consumer complaints.