Tulsa Tonight

To my friends,

I need you all to read this and do what you can to protect yourself. I have become the victim of ‘Credit Card Cloning’. A term I had heard once before but knew nothing about.

This weekend I made several bank deposits in Tulsa and expected to see them all settled by Monday morning. Turns out that there was actually less money in my account on Monday than there should have been. I had been out over the weekend doing the usual stuff, going to a club, going out to dinner, renting vids - food shopping… stuff we all do. I used my check card about 5 times.

Upon looking at my online bank statement, I saw several transactions for my check card that I couldn’t identify as mine. Further investigation showed that the charges were for small amounts of 20, then 50 then 80 dollars each and were charged at convenience stores about 120 miles away from me. Needless to say, I hadn’t been outside of Tulsa all weekend, yet I had charges on my account from Oklahoma City, Del City and Midwest City.

Of course I cancelled the card and was told by my bank that the money would be refunded in about 60 days or less AFTER they had taken steps to investigate the matter. Keep in mind that the entire weekend when these charges occurred, I had my physical card with me and did not lend it to anyone.

I was told that my check card had been ‘CLONED’ - The process of which is pretty bizarre… Basically - someone carries a small pager sized device and when you attempt to pay for something like groceries, dinner whatever… the person handling your card swipes it through the regular credit card terminal and then does so again into the pager sized device. The pager device stores all of the info that is encoded into the magnetic strip part of your card, namely your name, date of birth, entire check card (or credit card) numbers, PIN info etc. Then that info can be encoded onto a BLANK credit card which is then sold or used by the perpetrator to purchase items anywhere that credit cards are accepted.

This process or this crime shall we say, is prevalent in Europe and now even in the U.S. - but in Oklahoma? Yes, while the authorities have stated that this type of crime is not seen often here in Oklahoma, it is apparently on the rise.

There is more info on this type of crime here:

http://www.italy.usembassy.gov/acs/security/files/060926.asp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sexUus0igWs

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/pae/News/Pr/2005/sep/roberts.pdf

Friends, Please watch where and how you use your check cards, credit card or basically any card that uses a magnetic strip - you too could become a victim of credit card cloning just as I have.

There are other people that this has happened to as well….

http://www.belch.com/blog/2007/10/28/credit-card-cloning-scam/

http://blog.vortexdna.com/defrauded-by-a-sneaky-credit-card-thief/

Here is a website that talks about Financial Security Breaches…

http://www.creditcave.com/financial-security-breaches-10-of-the-biggest.php

And yet another that talks about how scammers used cloned credit card info to defraud the U.S. Postal Service…

http://fraudwar.blogspot.com/2007/08/self-service-stamp-machines-targeted-by.html

Please be careful!

Vinnie