The U.S. Secret Service, state, and local law enforcement partners, conducted a payment card skimming and Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) fraud outreach operation Aug. 1-2 in several Alaskan cities.
The law enforcement team, which included the Secret Service, Anchorage Police Department, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Alaska, U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General, and the Alaska State Troopers, visited 165 businesses in Anchorage, Palmer, Wasilla, Kenai, Soldotna, and Seward.
They inspected ATMs, gas pumps and point-of-sale terminals for skimming devices and left educational materials for business owners and managers.
Two skimming devices were recovered during the operation. In total, more than 1,750 point-of-sale terminals, gas pumps and ATMs were inspected, the agency said.
“In the past few months, we’ve seen an increase in credit card skimming and EBT fraud in the greater Anchorage area,” said Glen Peterson, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s Seattle Field Office, whose area of responsibility includes Alaska. “Our goal is to locate and remove skimming devices before people’s credit card data can fall into the hands of criminals.”
This as the first time an outreach operation such as this has been conducted in Alaska by the U.S. Secret Service.
EBT information and other payment card numbers can be stolen when criminals install an illegal skimming device to the point-of-sale terminal in order to capture card information. They then encode the stolen data onto another card with a magnetic strip, such as a gift card or hotel key. It is estimated that skimming costs consumers and financial institutions more than $1 billion each year.
Law enforcement agencies have seen a nationwide increase in skimming over the past 18 months, particularly targeting EBT cards, which are sometimes known as “food stamps.” Each month, taxpayer money is deposited into government assistance accounts intended to help families pay for food and other basic items. This enables criminals who steal card information to time their fraudulent withdrawals and purchases around the state government’s monthly deposits, the agency said.
In 2020, a man with a Romanian passport was arrested for using credit card skimming devices in Alaska.
Marcus Rosu, an international criminal who lived in California, was sentenced in 2021 to 30 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release for bank fraud using a device to steal credit card information through skimming. He was required to pay $57,713.53 in restitution to his known victims. But he was released Aug. 26, 2022.
According to court documents, he became the subject of a federal investigation in February of 2020, when the United States Postal Inspection Service intercepted a package containing hundreds of fraudulent bank cards containing customers’ card information. The cards were backtracked to more than 70 banking institutions in southern California and some were traced to fraudulent transactions in Anchorage and the Mat-Su Valley. Through the course of the
investigation, Rosu was identified as the suspected mailer of the package.
Its all true……..I had trouble with my card while shopping for groceries and trying to get cash at my atm. I went in and reported it to the financial institution. I made them look up the time frame and check it out. Anyone who experiences this issue while trying to use your financial cards, check in at your financial institution and set it right on your personal account.
Maybe the Secret Service should be focusing on keeping Presidents safe and leave skimmers for local law enforcement and/or the FBI.
MAYBE…that is ONE of the jobs they are tasked with. MAYBE, if the loser democrat legislatures would QUIT being soft on crime and keep criminals in jail, and make condotions TOUGH instead of easy, effing criminals would learn to be AFRAID of commiting their crimes! Either punish the criminals or stop whining about crime!
Getting tougher doesnt work either. Studies show that longer prison sentences do not lower crime rates, but do create a costly sag on our economy.
We need to completely rethink crime and retool our system to be more effective.
I agree about the Secret Service!
The secret service is much larger than you are imagining. They were actually founded to investigate financial crimes, protecting presidents was a mission they were tasked with much later. I guarantee you that removing this from their assigned duties would have no effect on how well presidents would be protected. It might actually harm that mission since their funding would be massively cut and the pool of employees to pick security details from would be much smaller.
Right lol
The secret service is in charge of US money. Not just presidents.
If you counterfeit money, it falls under the secret service domain.
Secret service was probably the ones skimming the cards.
After their recent demonstration I would not bet on them.
Should we change our cards?
Which stores had the skimmers?
36th and cst holiday does. Scammer took 1900 in food stamps from me also 750 cash from my cashapp.
Where exactly were the skimming devices recovered from?
I’d like to know this as well.
Here’s what I believe is going on. The thugo guvernment is going to make people so afraid to use their cards, the banks are going to play along with the narrative and make everyone very, very afraid to use their cards. Soon, everyone will be begging for the CBDC that the thugo guvernment wants us all to be using.
At least secret service gets something done FBI just sits on their butts
You think so?
I’ve worked with Fibbies on task forces…
I’d say his comment is a pretty fair assessment.
The local Fibbies are mostly all pretty good guys who want to do what’s right and do well for Alaska. They have bosses just like anyone, and DC ties their hands like you wouldn’t believe.
Would have been nice to know what businesses had this happen so customers could check with their bank.
Agree with Loran: SS should concentrate on President and Ex Presidents….
They are not saying. – sd
US money falls under their jurisdiction. Not just presidents.
Sounds like how Property Taxes work… Skimming off mortgage payments… ^^^
Federal Government over reach!!!
They should have announced the businesses that had scammers attached to them. Could be an inside job. Just because you found it and took it out does not mean it wasn’t replaced with another one. People should be aware of where, when, and how these devices were used to help prevent further instances of this abuse.
Agree – sd
That’s not very fair to the business owners… anyone can purchase a card scimmer and attach it where ever…
If they disclose that information, that business would inevitably lose a ton of business. For something that they are likely not at fault for.
Businesses should be checking their card readers daily to make sure they have not been tampered with. They can easily put a strip of colored tape on the card reader and see if it has been covered up or not.
In 1980 congress decided the Secret Service job should be expanded by making it responsible for financial device fraud and identity theft. The origin of the Secret Service was as a branch of the treasury to fight counterfeiting. 36 years after it’s creation, McKinley was shot and congress made it part of their job to protect the president. A little history for people that didn’t know. And I believe some financial crimes should be treated with the same seriousness as murder. In many cases these crimes result in the taking of a life by destroying the life a person has spent a lifetime creating. As long as the law allows for people to prey on others at will, it is going to continue. Hanging should be brought back. It was a hell of a deterent.
Good post more positive and less negative
Thank goodness somebody else knows this.
Hanging is barbaric tho. Make them babysit all the kids that the moms can’t afford childcare, so they can work.
Anchorage has literally become the LA/Seattle on Cook Inlet. The few trips we made to California over the years, every time we bought gas the debit card used would get skimmed. Have to get a new one. Rampant down there.
I would have to go looking into some regulations and statutes, but I am not sure there is any authority the Secret Service has outside of the clients they are chartered to protect. Does anyone else see something fishy in this or is the reporting off?
Secret service is a branch of the treasury dept. their job is to oversee money issues, like counterfeiting and these types of fraud. They weren’t appointed to protect diplomats until the 20th century.
It’s been asked before.. WHICH STORES HAD THE SKIMMERS?!
The SS , FBI, ATF, CIA & the DOJ should all be defunded & abolished. The federal government has no business arresting & prosecuting people for crimes of any kind unless committed in Washington DC or on federal government property like military bases. The secret service has proven that they can no longer protect the people in their charge especially now that it is starting to look like they were complicit In the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump & the FBI has proven over the last 8 yrs that when it comes to Donald Trump (& God only knows how many other Americans) they are capable of setting people up by planting evidence lying under oath to the courts to obtain warrants, illegal spying, selective prosecution. & fixing elections against the will of the American people.
It’s time for a second American revolution before we end up in a second civil war
As a cashier, I was specifically trained to look for these devices. It was part of my initial training and while not specifically part of my daily duties, I make it a point to monitor the pinpad while I’m working.
Credit cards are as stupid as rotory phones with hard line back in the day it was like magic until cell phones and took pics. I.amagine Kodak film. Was like shoot those criminals. Now you gotta carry a card and slip or give the number. Solution.
Eye and finger recognition. Then access to your account only with you double Tapp after eye. No one has the same of either. Even on computer for on line purchase. It’s fail proof. Wait banks will hate it like Kodak film.. do you get my drift. It’s time to imbrase A1. Don’t be afraid trust me.
English much? Seriously, know the basics if you have something to state.
Not that readers here expect perfection, but there are some standards and basic literacy is one of them.
Wow that gave me a headache to try and decipher!!
Nothing could go wrong with companies having your ,finger prints,eye prints or facial recognition.
No fraud could ever be committed , nobody could be accused of a crime they didn’t commit. The government now has everything they need to “place “ you there , your eyes, fingerprints and face. But,no worries out beloved government would NEVER use those against you or sell them to the highest bidders, that information could never be hacked and used for nefarious reasons.NEVER. 😄
Southcentral Alaska is good about seeing things that are going on. It’s a great time to catch up with your local security.
Cash is king people, use it.
There are ways to recognize skimmers, they have a gap, ( looks like a second place to insert car) they don’t generally have the two “sealed” stickers on them.
Gas station pump keypads and convenience stores are the scammers favorite places to put these, but those little out of the way restaurants are also a place they like to put them.
But again, use cash.
Cash maybe inconvenient, but so is having to replace your card, having to close your banking account and open a new account, and calling all of the companies that auto withdraw payments to set up new services.
FIRST…
Keep all, and I mean ALL, of your cards in a “locked” status when you are not in the direct use of them.
SECOND…
Turn on all notifications on your cards to notify you of any use. ANY.
THIRD…
Turn off any permissions for overseas/foreign transactions.
FOURTH…
Stay out of the one super-sized big box discount store in Kenai…that shall remain nameless.
The fact of the matter is, the credit card/bankcard companies prefer that you don’t actually know how common card usage/theft is. It’s better for them for you to be blissfully ignorant and to pay off small claims than to have you know how insecure cards are.
Where were the devices located?
They are not saying, but we are deducing they were in Anchorage. – sd
Thank you, Suzanne.
Recent experience suggests and observations support that at least one of them was/is in Kenai.
ALL card transactions should have a 2fa option. The fact they don’t is telling.
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