Dispatch from Tania vol 4
This morning reporter Tania Chatila got a call from a woman letting her know detectives were at an El Monte ARCO station investigating a potential stolen credit and debit scam. The scam works by capturing magnetic information from the strip on the back of your card. Here's Tania's dispatch from the field:
In the time I've spent covering fraudulent crime stories, I've built up quite a list of do's and dont's when it comes to credit and debit card use. One of those dont's is the idea that when given the choice, people should use their debit cards as a credit transaction, requiring no pin number, instead of a debit transaction, requiring a pin number. This is to protect from debit card fraud.
But when the criminals are coming up with advanced enough technology to steal your information both ways, what's the point? El Monte Police detectives are investigating at least 15 cases of credit card fraud linked to an Arco Gas station near the El Monte airport. In this case, police believe the suspects used technology that could read both electronic strips on the back of cards and pin numbers.
So either way, the patrons of this popular gas station were doomed.
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FRANK GIRARDOT
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This gas station charges less per gallon for using an ATM card instead of a credit card. These thieves accessed both my account no. and PIN no. to withdraw $1000 cash over the weekend from ATM's in Las Vegas. I try to be careful and prevent people from seeing me enter my PIN but that's irrelevant with these new theft devices. Carrying too much cash is also dangerous. I guess there's no easy answer for protecting ourselves. If it is true that the gas station was not involved in the thefts I feel sorry for all the business that they will lose. Thanks for publishing the story. Until this morning I was racking my brain on how someone could get both my account and PIN numbers. Thanks for all the information on your blog.
Thanks for reading. Tania Chatila followed this story pretty closely yesterday. Initially the police believed there were only 15 victims and around $10,000 scammed. But as stories like yours continue to roll in, my guess is that the total is going to be much higher.
It's nice of you to point out that the gas station owner didn't know this was going on, his business could suffer from suspicious customers.
I just filed my report with the detective and he said that there were around 60 victims so far and the numbers were increasing quickly as people heard about the story. He also said that some victims had not been to that ARCO in quite a while but that the thieves don't always use the card info right away. It takes them time to make and distribute the phony cards.