10
Wednesday, October 6, 1993
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
814 Massachusetts
Dine in or Carry-Out
843-BIRD
BLUEBIRD
DOES YOUR PORTFOLIO NEED A BOOSTER?
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6 ;
7:00 p.m. RM. 100 STAUFFER-FLINT
Find out tonight if your portfolio needs an extra booster. The KU AID CLUB will hold a workshop designed to help students with resumes, cover letters, interviews and portfolios. Three highly respected Kansas City advertising professionals will conduct the sessions. Everyone is encouraged to attend. Don't worry. It won't hurt a bit.
KU AD CLUB MEMBERS GET IN FREE.
ALL OTHERS WILL BE CHARGED A 'S COVER.
ROCK·CHALK·REVUE
1994
The All-University Musical Revue Benefiting the United Way presents "THE WORD IS OUT!" Now
GET THE ART OUT!
ALL NEW
Poster Design Contest Winning Design Receives $100! Contest Rules and Entry Forms available at the Organizations and Activities Center, 400 Kansas Union.
Submit designs by 5 pm, Monday, Oct.11.
Jayhawk Bookstore JOURNAL-WORLD
Credit-card crime plagues consumers; Midwest hit hard by crafty criminals
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For Rebecca Ginther, it began as a phone call from a gift catalog business about a $500 order she never made. Then she got a bill from another company for $230 worth of grass skirts and other party gear.
Douglas Buchholz, a special agent in charge of the Secret Service in Kansas City, called credit-card thieves from densely populated areas like New York, California and Florida like to roam the Midwest.
By Sau Chan The Associated Press
The RAM Research Corp., a Frederick, Md., firm that compiles statistics on credit cards, estimates U.S. losses in the use of four major credit cards — Visa, Mastercard, Discover and Optima — rose from $125 million in 1983 to $720 million last year.
Ginther was among thousands of Americans increasingly touched by the world of credit-card fraud. Someone Ginther had never met was using her name and card number account information to charge up a storm.
Global losses for Visa and Mastercard due to various scams totaled $1.18 billion in 1992 worldwide, company figures show.
Another trend law enforcers have noticed involves the Midwest With its abundance of friendly towns, it has become a popular venue for outsiders to commit credit-card crime because they can get away with it.
As the use and popularity of credit cards has grown, so has the sophistication and brassiness of criminal abuse.
"I don't know what the market price of grass skirts is, but that was another surprise." Ginther said.
The mailing address on the first order wasn't hers and the phone number listed on the party-supply bill led to an answering machine.
Like modern-day Bonnie and Clydes, they move from town to town, city to city, one step ahead of the law.
"It's the old phenomenon of high concentration, high visibility and low concentration, low visibility," said Bill Noonan, senior vice-president of Credit Systems Inc., a processor for Mastercard and Visa transactions in the Midwest.
Still, not every credit-card crime goes unpunished. Last year in Kansas City, Mo., for example, police arrested two women though to be part of a card fraud scheme operating out of
the Los Angeles area. The pair went on a two-day, $19,000-spending spree with false driver's licenses and seven counterfeit cards. Both pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison terms.
Many cases, though, are never prosecuted. Ginther, who canceled her credit card after getting the suspicious phone call and bill, said the bank that issued her card won't pursue a case if the cost exceeds the fraud amount.
"Many of the smaller amounts are never caught," Buchholz said. "The company that issues the card must often swallow the cost."
Card holders may be liable for up to $50 if their cards are used fraudulently. This might seem a minor problem, but canceling and replacing the card and clearing up a credit report can be a time-consuming hassle.
Financial institutions that absorb
"People think they're safe going on vacation with $20 in their pocket and three credit cards."
Chip Buland Citibank investigator
the loss often pass the cost on to consumers. This partly explains why credit-card interest rates, despite easing up in the past few years, have remained substantially higher than most loans.
But credit-card issuers aren't standing by idly while defrauders reap millions from their trade. Visa, for example, rolled out a new technology worldwide in April that checks a card's magnetic stripe for alterations. Others are improving identification safeguards to foil impostors using stolen cards. Citibank, for example, began digitally imprinting customer's photographs on its credit cards this year.
"People think they're safe going on vacation with $20 in their pocket and three credit cards rather than taking
But that doesn't mean credit cards are less vulnerable to abuse.
$1,000 in cash. But it's no safer," said Chip Bulb, a Dallas-based investigator for Citibank, the nation's leading issuer of credit cards.
Emily Tennyson of Detroit learned that lesson in June when she got a $76 credit-card bill from Negril Palm Beach Club in Jamaica.
"At first I couldn't figure out where that came from," she said. Then she remembered a family dinner at the restaurant during a vacation last November. Someone at the restaurant, riffing through the garbage, had found a carbon copy of Tennyson's credit-card bill and used the number fraudulently.
An unscrupulous employee who saves transaction carbons is just one kind of credit-card crook. Besides outright thieves and counterfeiters, there are "dumpster divers," who search garbage bins for carbons or receipts; and "should skimmers," who get the number while glancing over the shoulder of someone with a credit card in view.
"At some gas stations, all people have to do is run their card through a machine, and then they dump the receipt," Buland said. "Someone else can easily pick it up."
Some thieves use account numbers to impersonate cardholders and request new copies of a card. The gutierer thieves apply for new cards with purported personal information from other people's lives.
Buland said those "personal identifiers" aren't too difficult for seasoned thieves to find: They search trash cans for discarded mail, lift new mail right from the mail box, or steal wallets or personal documents that have the needed information. Serious credit thieves can make their own cards if they have a magnetic encoder, a computer and an embossing machine — technology available at hospitals and universities.
Noonan said that the method of choice for sophisticated fraud rings, which melt down a credit card, reform the numbers and transfer stolen account information onto a magnetic strip.
A close inspection can sometimes reveal a card has been re-embossed or doctored. In some cases the original numbers remain visible under the reformed plastic, and the card looks slightly distorted.
But Noonan said some counterfeit cards are so well-made, their flaws can barely be detected.
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