Real Estate Investment Articles

Growing credit card theft, fraud problem almost impossible to stop

By: Daniel Silliman

Jo-Lynn McEwan didn’t notice that her wallet was a little lighter that day. She didn’t notice that two Visa credit cards were missing. But she knew something was wrong.

“I called a friend,” she said, “and I told her, ‘I’ve just been taken for something and I don’t know what.’”

Two women walked into her store Wednesday, Aug. 23, and looked around. One of them tried to buy something and said she needed a box. McEwan tried to help her. She and the woman went to the back of Simple Pleasures, on Jonesboro Road in downtown Jonesboro, and tried to find a box.

The other woman, McEwan said, stayed up by the counter and when McEwan looked at her she was just standing there.

“I knew. It was obvious. I had flags going off the whole time,” she said.

Then, when McEwan tried to ring up the woman’s purchase the woman couldn’t find her credit card. She looked for it, got real worried, said she must have left it at the gas station and she and her friend rushed off.

Something didn’t feel right, McEwan said. The woman didn’t really seem interested in the merchandise. The woman didn’t really seem to need the box and the two of them split up in the store. It didn’t seem right but she didn’t know what, exactly, was wrong.

“Not until I got home that night, and see it was Wednesday. I went to church that night so it wasn’t until 9:30 that I got home,” McEwan said.

When McEwan got home there was a message waiting for her from one of the banks where she has a credit card. Purchases had been made on McEwan’s Visa at a three CVS stores along Tara Boulevard, two Eckerd drug stores, a BP gas station and a Target in Cobb County. That’s when she knew.

“It just depressed the daylights out of me, initially. It knocks the wind out of your sails. And then I got mad,” she said.

The two women spent $3,698.87 that afternoon, said Clayton County Police Detective P.G. Maine. They bought $50 and $100 gift cards at CVS and Eckerd. They bought a tank-full of gasoline at BP and they bought an Xbox and a pile of games and movies at Target.

“They just swiped the card, smiled and left,” McEwan said.

Eight years ago, Maine said, when she was started working for the department, there were credit card frauds and thefts “once in a blue moon.” Today, she investigates them every day.

“It is a growing problem, not just in Clayton County but across the nation,” said CCPD Assistant Chief Jeff Turner.

The Federal Trade Commission received 695,000 complaints of credit card fraud or identity theft in 2005 — 33,643 more than the year before. There was $680 million lost to credit card fraud or identity theft, that year, with an average of $33,643 lost per complaint.

At the end of July, Clayton County crime analysts had counted investigations of 140 financial transaction card frauds, 328 financial identity frauds and 64 credit card thefts.

Maine said she often works 13 to 16 of these cases a month.

No numbers were immediately available for Henry County, but McDonough Police Chief Preston Dorsey said, “over the last few years, over the last five years, it’s really become a problem. It’s been a problem here in McDonough. It’s very hard to stop. I don’t know that there’s any way to stop someone from stealing your identity.”

When McEwan spoke to her credit card companies, that night, they told her she didn’t need to stop it, she said. The insurance would cover it.

“They just seem to look at it like it’s one of the expenses of doing business,” she said. “I’m not going to pay anything, but that’s not the point.”

McEwan went through the charges of the day and found out what each purchase was for and if any of the eight companies had surveillance cameras that might have captured the women who took her cards. Two of them did.

One of the CVS stores on Tara Boulevard has given Maine a DVD of the two women making their purchases, and the Target in Cobb County said it had especially sharp photos of the women’s faces.

“I have them on camera,” Maine said, “and if the victim or someone can identify them...”

Maine said the key to these cases is getting someone to identify the suspects. Most of the time the victims have never seen the suspects before. McEwan doesn’t know who the women are, doesn’t know where they came from or why they picked her credit cards to steal.

“It’s frustrating. It’s very frustrating,” she said. “What they did to me, I want to extend the same courtesy to them. We’re all just going to hell in a hand basket here. This is what happens when you take God out of society, when you ignore the Ten Commandments.”

The other way investigators can find credit card thieves and identity thieves is to follow the purchases. If someone steals an identity and has things sent to their residence, Maine said, then obviously they’re easy to find. But in the case of McEwan’s cards the purchases are up and down Tara Boulevard and then off into Cobb county.

The gift cards were later used in Florida, Maine said, but she doesn’t yet know who used them in Florida and if that means that the cards were sold.

Part of the reason it’s such a fast-growing crime may be the difficulty card holders have in protecting themselves.

“It’s almost impossible to stop somebody from taking your identity,” Dorsey said.

Maine said that in most of the cases she works, the victims haven’t used their credit cards or identity information any differently than she uses hers.

“They haven’t done anything wrong. They haven’t done anything I don’t do,” she said.

There are a few things that people can do, Dorsey said.

“Definitely shredding checks, bank statements, anything that your Social Security number and date of birth on it. Definitely check with the credit bureaus periodically to see if anybody has tried to open an account in your name. I don’t know that there’s any fool-proof way to protect yourself though. If they really want to steal your identity they will.”

McEwan, for her part, blames the stores.

“Not one store asked for ID, never once,” she said.

Maine said she’s mostly stopped using her credit cards. She uses her cards two or three times a month. She uses them if she buys airplane tickets, she said. When she uses them, the transactions are normally over the phone.

“I personally just feel more comfortable on the phone because I know who I’m calling. With the Internet you hear so many stories,” she said.

The FTC reports that almost half of the frauds and thefts it deals with are Internet transactions.

McEwan has two new credit cards sitting at home, she said. The credit card companies replaced them pretty quickly. She’s not sure, though, that she wants to use them.

“I think maybe a check book is good enough for me,” she said.

Source:
http://www.news-daily.com/local/local_story_244220541.html

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