Credit Card Skimming On The Rise

Some straw buyer, mortgage fraud scams have incorporated identity theft into the mix, whereby straw buyers who are in on the scam from the get-go use stolen identities to illegally obtain mortgage loans.

One technique for stealing identities which appears to be on the rise is credit card skimming. An entry in Wikipedia (as of 11-12-07) contains the following description of credit card skimming:

• Skimming is the theft of credit card information used in an otherwise legitimate transaction. It is typically an "inside job" by a dishonest employee of a legitimate merchant, and can be as simple as photocopying of receipts. More imaginative routes are possible; an episode of The Sopranos showed how a compromised magnetic stripe reader could store account information for later use. Common scenarios for skimming are restaurants or bars where the skimmer has possession of the victim's credit card out of their immediate view. The skimmer will typically use a small keypad to unobtrusively transcribe the 3 or 4 digit Card Security Code which is not present on the magnetic strip. Many instances of skimming have been reported where the perpetrator has put a device over the card slot of a public cash machine (Automated teller machine), which reads the magnetic strip as the user unknowingly passes their card through it. These devices are often used in conjunction with a pinhole camera to read the user's PIN at the same time.

WTVJ-TV Channel 6 in Miami, Florida recently ran a credit card skimming story reporting that "what started at restaurants, police records show, is now being found in fast food outlets, hotels, and grocery store ATM machines." The story describes one recent case in which an 18 year old drive-through cashier at a McDonald's was arrested in September for skimming 100 credit cards, police say, before he was stopped. Police say he admitted he did it.

To watch the report and see how easy it is for an employee of a local merchant to literally "swipe" an unsuspecting customer's I.D. information off the magnetic strip from a credit card, see Who's Swiping Your Card? (NBC 6 Investigates Credit Card Skimming).

Go here for additional footage of NBC 6 reporter Jeff Burnside talking about his investigation, "Who's Swiping Your Card?"

Go here to read the online story.

For another story on credit card skimming, see:

• Authorities indicted 13 in alleged identity theft ring - Alleged New York City I.D theft ring accused of hiring waiters and waitresses to steal credit card info from restaurant customers by use of small skimming devices; ring accused of making millions of dollars of credit card charges, over 1000 victims identified.