Busting of Fake Credit Card racket near Toronto makes this a good time to revisit Credit Card Fraud!
A fake credit card racket was busted in the last week of January this year in Markham near Ontario. Using specialized equipment, the fraudsters were converting ordinary plastic cards to credit cards, health cards, social insurance cards and whatever else you can imagine.
In the second week of this month, the State Attorney General of Oklahoma warned residents of the state that internet fraud was on the rise in the area. While the two incidents may not be related, it will do us good to heed these as a warning.
A resident of the state in fact, alerted the police after he received a phony credit card in his ordinary mail. The card came along with a letter requesting the recipient to confirm his bank details to enable activation of the card. The letter also directed the resident to a website where the relevant details could be submitted.
Having the advantage of being familiar to such scams, the alert resident’s suspicions were immediately aroused. Immediately, he reported the matter to the police.
What the scammers were aiming at, was to get hold of such critical information as bank account number and/or social security number and to misuse it for personal gain. In internet fraud parlance, this is commonly known as Phishing and identity theft.
There are ways to make out whether cards you receive are phony or not:
- The white strip that carries your signature on the card should never be plain white. It always has ‘Visa’ or ‘MasterCard’ printed across in small print, many times over.
- It is a clear sign of a fake card even if this print is unclear or smudged.
- When placed under UV light, a large image of a white dove or the letters MC show up respectively on the card, according to it being a Visa or MasterCard.
- Genuine cards also feature micro printing on them: what looks like a thin line to the naked eye turns out to be really fine printing when looked through a magnifying glass. This feature is especially important as it’s very hard to imitate using ordinary printing equipment.
Armed with these facts, you can be on the alert and prepared when you receive a credit card in your ordinary mail in the coming weeks!
Related posts:
- New Telephone Scam Warning for Ottumwa Residents
- Police Busts ‘$4.5m eBay Scam’
- Card Skimming: Herkimer Police seem to have netted a big one
- Phone Scam Targets Glenview Residents
- Card Skimming Alert for Pierce County and Nearby Residents
February 13th, 2008 at 7:04 am
Thanx for these cautions! Don’t you think that everyday growth of online frauds makes people pay less attention to such offline credit card rackets?
December 18th, 2008 at 7:04 am
no