Credit Card Theft

[StrawHat]

So I was in Vegas a few weeks back for the World Series of Poker and while I was down there I received and urgent message from one of my banks. The text informed me that my CC was used at a JC Penny in my home state -- but different city -- over a thousand miles away from my current location. Naturally, I was quite irate over this, especially since it happened during my trip and consequently, affected the finances that I could use.

Well it turns out I had my card on me so it's not like someone stole it. The bank didn't say for sure, but it sounded like whomever tried to use my card at JC Penny did so physically at the store. I'm wondering how they were able to do that? If it's somebody I know, I don't see how they could write my card info down on a piece of paper and just read it off to the clerk? Or if they did do that, would store clerks allow that type of transaction? I guess I'm just pissed because I don't understand how the instance came to pass, and how CC fraud seems to be as important as dung beetles to law enforcement these days. I even tried filing a police report and they seem to put it on the back burner.

I even told them step-by-step how to identify the thief (if they did it in the physical location) and I'm still waiting for a callback.

Anyone have any ideas on types of credit card frauds and transactions? Or anyone have any similar stories they'd like to share?

 

[FnX]

When I took a trip to certain parts of europe, I was somewhat paranoid about skimming machines. Criminals sometimes place them between you and an ATM for example, in a way that is hard to notice. They can duplicate the info from the card and it is possible that there's a small camera that tries to spy on your pin number. This stolen info can then be printed on a blank credit card and a thief might impersonate you to try and use it. If the exact same card (duplicate) is being used in two locations over a thousand miles away in a very short time period, it must raise some alarms in your bank.

I'm guessing that it was used in your home state so the thousand mile distance thing would not expose the thief, who probably had no idea you were on a vacation, but in a different city so that the clerk was less likely to recognize someone was trying to use a card that didn't belong to them.

That's one possibility at least, try googling skimming machines if you need instructions how to spot them and check the local news for any reports of skimmers, when successful they often manage to copy a lot of cards and get news coverage, but I believe when some group manages to pull this off they often wait a period of time before using the info to reduce their chances of getting caught, so it might be hard to identify if and where you fell victim to a skimming machine.

I believe there are also smaller, portable skimmers that are used to copy individual cards instead of doing a riskier but more lucrative bulk operation on a public ATM. These kind of incidents might happen in shady strip clubs with drunk customers for example.

I don't know, but if the matter is under current investigation the bank might withhold some details in the event that one of the supposedly stolen cards actually belongs to the group and they are trying to get information about if and how they got caught.

Since it was a clear case of fraud, I hope you got your money back if you lost any.

 

[thujone]

http://krebsonsecurity.com/ often writes interesting articles about skimmers and the crime network they feed. This sort of crime is extremely prevalent in the U.S. because it still relies on mag stripe and signatures instead of Chip-and-PIN cards like the rest of the developed world now does

 

[Lysis]

It's actually very cheap to create your own cards.

I very interesting and collaborate example was the recent theft in Japan targeting banks in South African. The thieves bought numbers from the dark web, created cards, and then had several people hit ATM machines at the same time. They stole millions in the matter of hours so the banks didn't have time to react.

 

[SKL]

It is very easy to have your credit card information hijacked or stolen either IRL or online, as any number of stories from KrebsOnSecurity cited above will inform. Then sets of these information are sold online. Individual credit cards are quite cheap (somewhat depending on credit limit, etc.) and even better, "fulls" can be purchased which include your CC#, information about your personal history like what you get asked when you wish to open accounts online ("what kind of car did you have registered in florida in 2006?" or whatever) and are much more valuable. All of this is quite easy to access for those with the inclination. With a little more investment a machine which can encode the information onto a blank credit card, and the blank credit cards to do it with (or with some art on them; while cashiers are, according to the CC co's and sometimes codified into law, as it is in NY state, supposed to check front and back, etc. this never happens IRL; I have never seen this done, and I bet few to none of the other posters here have), are quite easily obtained. More fraud occurs online but what happened with your JC Penny story is most likely a situation where somebody bought some⁀thing(s) and returned it shortly thereafter, or more likely, hired a pluming of junkies (there's no plural word for them, like a "murder of crows," is there? anyway, I like "pluming," but digress) to do it for them, simultaneously, at quite a few places, with quite a few cards, but your bank was vigilant enough to catch it early.

Source: more than one of my old criminal ass friends that I talk to once in a while who got out of the drug game when pushed out of business by online competiton got into this game instead

 

[Pretty_Diamonds]

I've heard a lot of stories about store credit cards.... so there may be something less secure about them.

Someone must have had a duplicate card with them. No store will take just the number, unless it was a phone order, and it needs to be mailed to the billing address. But yeah, there's nothing police can do about it. It's the store's responsibility to investigate these CC fraud (since they're the one losing money). So what they would do, is flag the account and the next time it's used, it should show up on the cameras, and they would record and give the tapes to the police. Then the police would open up an investigation.

 

[StrawHat]

I've heard a lot of stories about store credit cards.... so there may be something less secure about them.

Someone must have had a duplicate card with them. No store will take just the number, unless it was a phone order, and it needs to be mailed to the billing address. But yeah, there's nothing police can do about it. It's the store's responsibility to investigate these CC fraud (since they're the one losing money). So what they would do, is flag the account and the next time it's used, it should show up on the cameras, and they would record and give the tapes to the police. Then the police would open up an investigation.

Yeah, that definitely won't happen. JC Penny said they needed a police report first before they proceed. Oh well, it pisses me off but what can you do? I guess I'll have to try to deduce the theft using the previous posts and proceed from their; hopefully prevent this in the future. . .

 

[Pretty_Diamonds]

Aw, that sucks. Best you can do is just close the account. If you're worried about identity theft, you should probably pull a full credit report, and just make sure all your loans and ccs are in order.

 

[Lysis]

Something you can do (I don't do this but I know a former bank manager who does) is have 1 CC that you only use online. This card number will likely get stolen.

A lot of little vendors online don't encrypt CC numbers in their database or the encryption is weak, so when they get hacked (and they usually do), your card is exposed. It's pretty common. I've had 2 CCs stolen this way. One of them I didn't even realize it was bad until 2 years later when I tried to use it. lol The bank's security had blocked the card from it being used. At least when you have it on a CC, you don't lose any immediate money. Just dispute and move on. If you keep it to one card, you can expect the 1 card to get stolen and just keep an eye on it.

One of the common things they will do is create little charges like $5 and then $3 and then another small amount. They want to see if you are paying attention and if the bank security flags the account. If you don't catch it, they then charge a huge amount like $5k. So this is another reason to have 1 card that you use online and either set strict monitoring on it or monitor it yourself.

 

[The-Horologist]

Credit card theft is a big issue here in the UK, especially in cities like London & Manchester, but like many have said you can buy cards online on dark web, very cheap too, for ?35 you get 10 cc numbers and details of owner, usually with good credit too, like 10k.
You can download your very own credit card machine from JetPay and do the cards that way, you just tell them you sold something and this is the card he paid with. Visa will even compensate you for your losses, lol.
I'm a criminal, been out of jail just 4 months, having spent 31 months banged up, you can't tell me anything about cc fraud coz I've done it, wore the t shirt etc, its the easiest crime and only carries a small sentence if caught.
Sorry to hear your card got cloned, but the bank will compensate you for your losses, its no big thing. Thank your lucky stars you don't get woken up with 2 barrels stuck imn your face by a balaclava clad butter, dragging you out of bed and stealing everything of value. That's crime, that's shit that changes your life, forever. This sort of crime is huge in south africa, you have to be super vigalent and armed because home invasion burglaries are a massive problem.