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Billion Dollar Plastic Scam


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FIGHT BACK! BY DAVID HOROWITZ

Billion Dollar Plastic Scam

Credit-card fraud costs American card companies $1 billion
a year. And who picks up the tab? Every person who carries a
credit card. We pay for it in higher interest rates and service
fees. According to Money magazine, a person who has eight credit
cards pays an average of $55 a year in additional fees just to
cover the cost of fraud.
Careless merchants are partly to blame for the rise in
credit-card rip-offs. Money recently had its editors trade cards
and make purchases on each other's accounts. (Each "passer"
carried a signed authorization from the legitimate card holder,
just in case they got caught.) They made 127 purchases all over
the country. 95 percent of the retailers never even checked the
signatures on the cards and charge slips. In one case, a male
editor used a female colleague's card to charge a $114 meal at a
New York restaurant and signed the charge slip "Daffy Duck." The
charge went right on through, no questions asked.
All it takes to run a credit scam is a name and account
number, and thieves have all sorts of ways to obtain those.
Stealing someone's wallet or purse is the most obvious method. But
it's also the riskiest, since the victim is almost certain to
report the cards lost and cancel them immediately.
Another way to get numbers is simply to call and ask for
them. A voice on the phone says, "You've won a fabulous grand
prize in our sweepstakes, and all we need is your credit card (or
social security) number to verify your eligibility." You'd be
surprised how many people give out those numbers just for the
asking.
Authorities in California broke up a fraud ring that was
operating out of Soledad state prison. Inmates' relatives called
several restaurants posing as Visa and MasterCard representatives.
They said their computers had gone down, and wanted to verify
charges made the previous day. The restaurants helpfully handed
over 83 card holders' names and account numbers, which the inmates
then used to make telephone purchases -- all on the prison's
phones.
A woman in South Florida had her purse stolen. Inside, the
social security number. They then applied for credit cards from
several major retailers, using her identity and a mail-drop
address for the "gifts" they ordered. Naturally, the victim got
the bills. The stores eventually canceled the charges and voided
the cards, but they passed on the losses to their other customers
as part of the cost of doing business.
Then there's the famous case of the thieves who set up a
phony automated-teller machine in a shopping mall in Manchester,
Connecticut. The machine copied card accounts and personal
identification numbers from people who tried to use their ATM
cards to withdraw cash. The scam operators used that information
to make counterfeit ATM cards, with which they withdrew $107,000
from the victims' bank accounts. Two of the men involved in the
scheme are now serving time in federal prison. A third received a
lesser sentence for conspiracy.
Magnetic fingerprint, holograms, watermarks, and card
holders' photos on cards may help cut down on credit card fraud.
But it's still up to us and to retailers to be more careful about
who uses credit cards and who has access to the kind of personal
information crooks can use to rip us off. COPYRIGHT 1994 CREATORS
SYNDICATE, INC.
 
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