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!
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.
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?
Where exactly were the skimming devices recovered from?
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?
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
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
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.
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?