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Skimming Card Information at Heart of ID Theft Ring Authorities in Orange County California have charged some four dozen members of an alleged identity theft ring nicknamed "Operation French Fry." The alleged thieves were involved in a range of activities including credit card skimming, stealing personal information from diners in restaurants, and the sale of information taken from mortgage applications. The Orange County Identity Task Force said 150 accounts had been compromised for losses in excess of $1 million. The theft ring included waiters in chain restaurants who skimmed encoded information from customer's cards as well as defendants who re-striped ATM cards in their possession with purloined account information. One suspect who has yet to be apprehended is believed to have skimmed as many as 300 Citicorp and American Express cards at an Applebee's restaurant for a loss of $18,000. This individual, however, apparently acted on his own and was not part of Operation French Fry. One 24-year-old defendant manufactured fake credit cards and stole credit card numbers. His activities accounted for some $100,000 in losses. The announcement on Friday, October 6 was the second major round of arrests by the task force which charged twenty defendants in January for participating in a fraud ring dubbed "Operation Paper or Plastic." The activities of that ring accounted for losses totaling more than $1 million over a four year period. The ring apprehended in January was run by a Las Vegas resident, one Ky Vu, who engineered the manufacture of false identification cards that allowed members of the ring to cash stolen tax refund checks and to make use of stolen credit cards in casinos. In addition to the indictment of those defendants who worked in restaurant chains or those who manufactured fake cards, several mortgage brokers were also charged for allegedly taking information from mortgage applications and selling the data. More Details... |
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