Identity Theft Scam Stole Millions – Pennies at a Time
“It was a very patient scam,” said Steve Wernikoff, a staff attorney with the FTC who is prosecuting the case. According to him, the scammers found loopholes in the credit card processing system that allowed them to set up fake U.S. companies that then ran more than a million phony credit card transactions through legitimate credit card processing companies.
The fraudsters were able to fly under the radar for so long because they only charged consumers between $ .25 and $9 and set up over 100 fake companies to pull off these transactions. In this specific case they charged over 1.35 million credit cards a total of $9.5 million dollars – those nickles and dimes really add up! Shockingly, 94% of these charges went undetected by the credit card holder because they didn’t notice an unusual charge on their credit card statements and fraud detection agencies rarely detect anything under $10.
