SKIMMERS - BUY ONCE, PAY AGAIN AND AGAIN

At KnightsBridge Castle our identity theft clients often speculate about how their credit card information was stolen. In most cases they have a very specific incident in mind. In almost every case they are wrong.

A common method of loosing your credit card number and security codes is by “skimming”. Skimming is the theft of credit card information, often by an employee of a legitimate merchant, using a magnetic stripe reader. These devices are commonly available on internet sites and cost about $100 or less. Each skimmer can store hundreds of accounts.

After 9/11 responsibility for credit card crimes was transferred from the FBI to the Secret Service (yes that’s the folks that protect the President and chase counterfeiters). The Secret Service has a limit of $2,000 before investigating each crime. All active credit card criminals know this and keep purchases from any one business below $2,000. The classic fraudulent purchase is a $1900 computer system from someone like Dell. The new computer, fresh from the factory, with warranty and a nice clean box, can be sold on the street (of course no questions asked) for about $800. These credit card crimes invariably cross police department jurisdictions and criminals often are never prosecuted because the dollar amounts are too low and jurisdictional issues abound. For example the card information was skimmed in BigCity, and the card used in LittleTown, (four miles away but with a separate police department). In this case the criminals will rarely be pursued by the police. At KBC we have seen cases where the criminal could be identified, but because the crime was committed in an adjacent town with a different police jurisdiction, the local police would not act.

Our "Identity Theft Most Wanted" blog contains the description of an alleged car thief who may have used skimming to facilitate their crime. The link is on the right of this page.