Thieves still a step ahead

Criminals are often an ingenious bunch.

Do you remember many years ago when fraudsters would comb through restaurant or retail store rubbish bins to find carbon copies of credit card transactions? That's still going on, but in a more modern, technologically-advanced way.

The RCMP, for the second time in two years, has busted a debit card forgery ring. Over 250 officers conducted raids in Quebec Wednesday morning. At least 45 people have been arrested on 358 charges, which include gangsterism. Over 12,000 counterfeit debit cards were seized. The RCMP says there are about 22,000 victims of these alleged crimes and the total amount of money stolen may reach $100 million.

The RCMP says the ring was well-organized, based in Montreal and was also operating in Vancouver, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Tunisia and the UK.

The fraud worked like this: point-of-sale pinpads were stolen with the consent of employees from commercial businesses and replaced with dummy pin pads. The stolen machine was then fitted with a card reader and Bluetooth transmitter and eventually re-installed. Transaction data was then fed to a computer.

The RCMP says the fraud ring would strike quickly and on a wide scale to drain victims' accounts. In one attack, for example, 79 cards were used at 23 banks in just over five minutes and more than $30,000 was stolen.

The RCMP has been investigating this case since 2008 when Canadian banks lodged complaints of customers accounts being compromised.

Whether criminals are wading through garbage or executing a sophisticated scam, the thievery continues and consumers need to be vigilant.