While everyone sues TJX, the criminals are laughing all the way to the bank

Here is a great example of why there is so much identity theft. In Ontario, a man and his wife went right back committing identity theft, while on bail for running a payment card (debit/credit card) skimming operation. As you will see, they were by no means, small operators.

From newsregiondurham.com, Jeff Mitchell reports:

Hundreds of new charges have been laid against a fraud suspect and his wife after Durham cops busted the two as they allegedly broke his bail conditions.

Police say they found evidence of widespread fraud when they searched the King City home of the man, arrested here last fall in connection with a credit and debit card skimming operation at a north Oshawa gas bar.

One fraud investigator said lists of debit and credit card numbers found in the home amounted to "an encyclopedia" of apparently stolen data.

Here is what they got caught with, while on bail for victimizing (probably) thousands of people:

During the arrest both occupants of the car were found to have counterfeit credit cards in their possession, police said. A subsequent search of their home resulted in the seizure of credit card writing equipment, 200 phoney credit cards and hundreds of pages of credit and debit card data, police said.

Police also seized the BMW, claiming it's proceeds of crime.

I guess no one figured out the BMW was paid for by theft, the first time around?

And meanwhile, lawyers and the banking industry are organizing law suits against TJX for their recent data breach.

Unless, we start making it dangerous for the criminals to commit financial crimes, the problem will keep growing!

While a lot of people focus on civil remedies, the criminals are laughing all the way to the bank. After all, they aren't being sued. AND the sad truth is that not very many of them are being caught.

The costs of litigation and fraud are both normally passed on to the consumer. Simple economics dictates that if they were not, the business would cease to exist. The fact that the banking industry (which could also be criticized for enabling some of this problem) is behind some of this litigation, bothers me!

Someone once said, "it isn't wise to throw stones when you live in a glass house."

Maybe I should do a few posts about how the banking industry makes it too easy to commit some of these crimes? For starters, we could discuss how easy it has become to counterfeit their payment devices, which is how the information is being turned into cash (what the criminals are after). We could also discuss how little they do to verify information, when issuing a credit card and all the unsolicited offers for credit (which are routinely stolen) out of the mail.

Thinking of that, I did a post about how easily criminals can manipulate this:

Ever wonder how well you are protected from credit card fraud?

Another thing to consider is that merchants already bear a lot of the cost of fraud becaue of chargebacks. This is where the bank charges back the fraud to the merchant. Many merchants feel strongly that they are already bearing the brunt of paying for all the fraud because of this practice.

For more information on this subject, visit Merchant911.org, here.

There is no doubt that the true victims of identity theft deserve compensation, but to me some of this litigation is designed (my emphasis) to pass the buck. As I stated earlier, when the buck is passed, it gets charged to the consumer (in the end), anyway.

When is someone going to start addressing the real problem? The facts are that it's too easy to commit payment card fraud, not very many criminals are getting caught, and when they are -- the consequences are pretty minimal.

Full story from newregiondurham.com (about the crooks out committing crime on bail), here.