Fraud protection discussed at Greater Shelby Chamber luncheon

A credit card skimmer can be purchased inexpensively on Amazon.com, and it’s available with free shipping.

“$99 — there’s your fraud starter kid,” said Shelby County Sheriff’s Office investigator Andrew Stanley.

Stanley investigates financial crimes for the Sheriff’s Office, and during the February Greater Shelby Chamber of Commerce he shared information on the trends investigators are seeing in Shelby County as well as how businesses and individuals can protect themselves.

Cloned credit card fraud is one of the most prevalent cases, he said, because it can be easily done. Most of the time, criminals will use credit card skimmers, he said, which come in handheld devices or can be attached to gas pumps or ATMs.

The skimmers copy credit card information that can then be scanned onto any card with a magnetic strip. Skimming devices are one of the easiest ways to obtain credit card information, Stanley said, but it is not the only way.

Information can also be obtained through online piracy or spyware. Those methods can draw information from a retail website continuously or for the past few days, Stanley said, and that information is oftentimes uploaded to a spreadsheet.

“They can either sell that or they can use that,” Stanley said of the hackers. “However they want to use it, it’s there.”

Bulk credit card information can then be used to create several cloned cards, and then those cards are used to purchase gift cards. Stanley said oftentimes, there is a ringleader who sends people out with the cloned cards.

“The guy that’s the smart one doing all this, you’re never going to see his face out there,” Stanley said.

One case the Sheriff’s Office is investigating involves a group out of Douglasville, Georgia. People have been sent out with 40 to 60 cloned cards, and Stanley said the person organizing the criminal activity is making sure to send the cloned cards to the correct city. If a cloned card that has information from Hoover is used in Hoover, he said, banks are less likely to catch it.

“This is probably the biggest fraud thing we’re seeing,” he said.

It can be difficult for individuals to protect themselves against credit card skimmers or spyware on retail websites, but Stanley said that added risk comes along with added convenience. As business owners, however, Stanley said chamber members can keep an eye out for suspicious activity.

People using cloned cards usually have a rental car, purchase multiple gift cards in a single transaction, put as much money on the cards as possible and will have multiple credit cards on hand, Stanley said.

If anyone sees someone doing those things, Stanley said to take down the individual’s driver’s license number and/or their license plate number. That information could be useful to the Sheriff’s Office in the future, he said.

An individual was recently arrested in connection to the Douglasville, Georgia credit card cloning ring, Stanley said, and he was found with 52 cards in his possession. He was making about $1,500 a day driving out to purchase gift cards with the cloned cards. The cards also looked like credit cards, with embossed numbers and logos.

“He said, ‘I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t ask. I needed the money,’” Stanley said.

Stanley also discussed organized retail theft, where groups of people will work together to steal items from a store and then resell them.

“Very rarely are they stealing for their personal use,” Stanley said.

The best way to protect against organized retail theft, he said, is to take extra security precautions. This can include surveillance to catch photos of suspects or license plate numbers, establishing a company policy for dealing with theft, training employees to watch for suspicious behavior and reporting all incidents to the Sheriff’s Office.

Vehicle theft by deception, the last crime trend Stanley discussed, is one that typically leaves the victim footing the bill, he said. Because these crimes often involve false account information that appears legitimate at first, some insurance companies look at it as a civil, not criminal, matter and do not cover the incident.

“I’ve spent just as much time talking with insurance companies, explaining to them this is theft, as I have trying to solve the case,” Stanley said.

Stanley said while Shelby County is fortunate to have fewer violent crimes than other areas, they do have to deal with a lot of fraud cases. He closed by thanking the community for their help and their calls that lead to arrests.

“This stuff, it’s not because I’m the best detective in the world,” he said. “It’s because I’m getting calls.”