Credit Card Help Center: Fraud
About credit card fraud.
Credit card fraud amounts to over a billion dollars only in the United States. Stolen, counterfeit, and lost credit cards cause most of the fraudulent activities.
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) reports that credit card fraudsters come from a wide variety of groups ranging from West African organized crime groups (that steal trays of legitimate credit cards at airports, mail delivery trucks, and other mail facilities) to postal workers.
Mail facilities are not the only places where credit cards can be stolen from. Freudsters steal credit card information and re-code the information on new magnetic stripes. Magnetic encoding machines are pretty inexpensive, and are widely available. It is also possible to emboss new information on the card. Embossing machines can be more expensive - especially the ones with high quality. But they can also be purchased from a variety of places.
Asian organized crime groups are known to have produced and shipped large amounts of blank counterfeit credit cards. These cards are embossed and encoded with new (valid or invalid) information in the recipient countries.
Retail store employees (and people that have to do with other people's cards) are known to have been bribed for information. Car rental agencies are also among the most common targets for document burglary - since the rental agreements contain legitimate credit card - as well as personal - information. Frausters have even been caught in the past while trying to burglarize a state division of motor vehicles. Therefore, any place that such information is stored - physically or digitally - is a target for frausters.
Merchants, bank associates, and other people can help detect fraudulent activities by looking carefully at:
- Whether the printed four-digit number and the first four embossed numbers on the front of the card are the same.
- Whether there are inconsistencies in the graphics, letter spacing, numbers, and indent printing on tamper-evident signature panels.
- Whether there are any scratched, or discolored holograms, logos, or signature panels.
- Whether there are any discrepancies in signatures, handwriting, or spelling.
Asking for additional forms of identification can also be very helpful.