credit cards
Parts 2 and 3 of the Dave Thomas Cybercrook story are up on Wired. The excellent report by Kim Zeter, two years in the making, offers a fascinating insight into the world of identity thieves, credit card scammers, phishers and all sorts of electronic fraud. Follow along as Dave transitions from petty thief, to cyber-crime master under the name ""El Mariachi" and with a James Cagney online avatar, to informant on the noose for the feds.
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california
Shopping at the Dollar Tree could end up costing you a lot. Hundreds of California patrons of the discount store report having money jacked from their debit accounts,
reports KCRA. Most likely, this was through the use of cloned ATM cards.
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small world podcast
SmallWorldPodcast interviewed El Mariachi, a man who commits online fraud and identity theft. The interview reveals details about another scammer, Dillinger, who was involved with the ATM hacks of the ill-fabled "Russian Connection" scandal.
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top
You would think that after Chase goes through the trouble of reissuing new Visa debit cards to replace its MasterCards, they might also take the precaution of deactivating the old card when the new one is activated. Not so, Disappointed in NYC writes. When our reader tried to cancel Vonage, they wanted to charge a cancellation fee. He refused but they still charged his old Chase Mastercard. Chase CSR said the Vonage charge went through but nothing else would.
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the illuminatus trilogy
Last week, we linked to an
excellent interview where Bazooka Joe at Small World Podcast spoke with an individual going by the name of "John Dillinger" who participated in the big ATM PIN block crisis. His involvement was to embed blank cards with the hacked PINS, withdraw the money from
ATMs, and send back a percentage to his uplink. John Dillinger commented on the post to make sure we got the story straight:
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the russian connection
Small World's Bazooka Joe interviews "John Dillinger," a debit card hacker who participated in the infamous "Russian Connection" ATM hack scandal. He discusses how he and others hacked millions of debit card accounts and why the story never makes the mainstream news.
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wamu
Seems like we have yet another thing to look forward to when we receive our shiny new gold Wamu card we didn't ask for.
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the russian connection

We've just been the lucky recipient of exciting news; the PIN range our debit card belongs to has been hacked. To celebrate, Washington Mutual is "upgrading" our debit card "to gold status for free."
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announcements
A
CBS Evening News producer sent us a note today. She wants to do a story on the the big ATM PIN Block Scam story we made such a fuss about last month.
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citigroup
Hey, remember all those debit cards and PINs that
got stolen and stuff? Where hackers got into Office Max, made off with debit card accounts and encrypted PIN codes, decrypted the PINs, made counterfeit ATM cards, and withdraw lots of money and large amounts of people were forced to get their ATM card changed without anyone telling them the real reason why? Well, apparently Citigroup remembers too. Eventually.
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the russian connection
Maybe the debit scam isn't over. That's what Jon thought we he got the pictured notice. You may recall through memory's hazy veil that scammers
stole thousands of debit cards and their PINs in weeks past, creating counterfeit cards and withdrawing cash from ATMs around the world.
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the russian connection
The mystery third party transaction software provider implicated in the ATM debit card scam scandal may have been named by VISA.
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