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ATM fraud network that robbed $1M busted

Doc Holliday

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MONTREAL — Officers with the economic crimes division of the Sûrété du Québec have broken up a fraud network operating out of Quebec and Ontario that stole more than $1 million from people using automatic teller machines.

Five search warrants were carried out in St-Sauveur, Piedmont and Toronto in the raids dubbed Operation Mongoose.

Police believe this fraud dates back to 2008 but the major investigation that led to the arrests began in Dec. 2013, said Sgt. Benoît Richard with the SQ.

The fraud involved the installation of a card reader at an ATM and also a small camera mounted over the machine to film clients keying in their PIN. The police estimate that 200 machines were altered during the duration of the fraud.

The card reader kept the information from the magnetic strip on the back of debit and client cards and with the PIN numbers, the group could clone cards and use them for unauthorized withdrawals.

Last December with complaints filed by various banks, the SQ moved in.

Five search warrants were carried out in homes and shops on Thursday morning resulting in four arrests and the seizure of cloning material and cash.

Thursday afternoon Martin Kouzov Antonov, 52, Vassilina Dimitrova, 48, Borislav Petrov, 53, and Iren Atanasov Vasilev, 42 will appear in court in St-Jérôme to face charges of data traffic, fraud, possession of cloning equipment and possession of data.

Police are looking for four men in the Toronto area in relations to this network.

Arrest warrants were issued for Stefan Stefanov, 45, Vencislav Gigov, 53, Valentin Borisov, 51, and Sirákov Konstantin, 39.

The Quebec victims of this fraud were from Montreal, Laval, the Laurentians, Montérégie and Gatineau. The Ontario victims were mainly in Toronto.

Richard said it is always prudent to shield the keypad with your hand or other means when punching in your PIN number.

ATM fraud network busted

Kick those damn commies out of the country and send them back to Russia where they belong!
 

Big_jo

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It's pretty common fraud. That's why you should never use private ATM machines.
99% of times they are rigged
 

marc7

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I used one once and enter the wrong pin ! Yeee free money ! Same thing with a taxi ! It cost less to banks to pay for fraud than make a real secure network !
 

EagerBeaver

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Funny but there was just a discussion in the exchange rate thread about how ATMs are the best thing since sliced bread for obtaining Canadian cash. I tried to tell guys they were not safe, this based on my own experience, and I was pooh poohed. You place yourself at the mercy of how much the bank has invested in security and I got news for ya, they don't give a fucking rat's ass about your security.
 

LadyLover

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Funny but there was just a discussion in the exchange rate thread about how ATMs are the best thing since sliced bread for obtaining Canadian cash. I tried to tell guys they were not safe, this based on my own experience, and I was pooh poohed. You place yourself at the mercy of how much the bank has invested in security and I got news for ya, they don't give a fucking rat's ass about your security.

They actually DO care about security and hence why they warn people to hide their pin and inspect machine. This is also why machines have a small cover where you enter your pin so that camera can not be installed easily.

Also take into account that in canada all retailers must use a chip machine now. That has cut down in frauds by about 90%. Unfortunately the rest of the world is not yet required to use chip technology yet and this is why the numbers stolen here are not used here and sent abroad.

Once everyone is required to use chip technology they will have to resort to alternative methods.

And ps... Everyone gets their money back from the bank if their card is cloned.

Only time they don't is if your card was stolen and your actual card was used to take out the cash because you had the code in your wallet as well or it was somethjng stupid easy like 1111 or something. Then they may not pay.
 

Special K

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Funny but there was just a discussion in the exchange rate thread about how ATMs are the best thing since sliced bread for obtaining Canadian cash. I tried to tell guys they were not safe, this based on my own experience, and I was pooh poohed. You place yourself at the mercy of how much the bank has invested in security and I got news for ya, they don't give a fucking rat's ass about your security.

You do realize that this happens in the US too, Beav?
 

EagerBeaver

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I think the ATMs in their bank are somewhat secure because the public cannot access them. You have to be a bank customer, swipe a card and go through a door to get at the ATMs after hours. The ATMs are located in vestibules between a secure outer door and an inner entrance door. It is a nice feature.

My bank actually gives me free identity theft protection, this as a result of an incident that occurred a few years ago that has nothing to do with their ATMs.
 

Doc Holliday

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Funny but there was just a discussion in the exchange rate thread about how ATMs are the best thing since sliced bread for obtaining Canadian cash. I tried to tell guys they were not safe, this based on my own experience, and I was pooh poohed. You place yourself at the mercy of how much the bank has invested in security and I got news for ya, they don't give a fucking rat's ass about your security.

So you NEVER use ATM machines other than the ones at your bank?? NEVER???? :confused:
 

EagerBeaver

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So you NEVER use ATM machines other than the ones at your bank?? NEVER???? :confused:

Like I said previously, I withdraw more money than I need and usually don't find myself in situations where I need to use an ATM when I am away from home. I see nothing wrong with carrying around more cash than is necessary. Yes if I get mugged, it would be a problem, but I have not been mugged. When the Colts owner Irsay got busted for DUI last week they found $29,000 in cash on his person. I don't carry around that much money. There is also very good reason to believe that bank ATMs, while not perfectly secure, are certainly more secure than ATMs the public has acccess to 24/7. It's common sense. Also the only time I had credit card hack issues was with using vending machines, and I don't do it any more. I kind of think all these things are common sense in the age of identity theft we live in.

My accountant told me tax ID fraud is a severe problem now because of hackers getting SS#s and filing bogus returns electronically claiming refunds. No way to stop it but what is recommended is filing early as possible-because you can't file twice using the same number. Return is rejected. That is what I did. I don't have to send a check to the IRS until April 15.

None of these steps are foolproof but they are all common sense/prudent ways to minimize the chance of ID theft. Bottom line is cash is king and always will be.
 

HornyForEver

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Also take into account that in canada all retailers must use a chip machine now. That has cut down in frauds by about 90%. Unfortunately the rest of the world is not yet required to use chip technology yet and this is why the numbers stolen here are not used here and sent abroad.

Chip/Smart cards are very secure indeed. I used to work in the field. Chips on these cards are tiny computers with cryptographic capabilities. As soon as you insert the card in the ATM, a mutual authentication protocol is initiated between the card and the terminal. Basically, the card ensures that it is not talking to a fake ATM and the ATM ensures it is not talking to a fake card. Banking accound data is securely stored on the chip. Once the mutual authentication process is over, the card sends the banking account data to the terminal via a secure channel. This means that, even if somebody manages to tamper the ATM, all that he/she will get is some gibberish that requires years and years of computing power before it is broken (which makes it worthless for the attacker). Chip cards use strong cryptography, we were using 512 to 1024 bit keys when browsers, at that time, used only 56 and 128 bit keys for https connections.

The vulnerability comes from the magnetic stripe on the card and as LadyLover has mentioned, this stripe is kept for backward compatibility reasons. About 130 countries have adopted chip cards. We have started using this technology just a few years ago in Canada. Some other countries are still 3 decades behind. Magnetic stripes can easily be cloned. A card cloning device can be very easily purchased on the Internet for a few hundred bucks.

Unfortunately, all the security provided by the chip is nullified by this stupid magnetic stripe and we still need to cover the ATM's keyboard with our hands when we key in our PIN and pray that the keyboard itself is not a fake one.

Finally, it bugs me that Canadian banks do not offer us cards without a magnetic stripe. At least, customers should be able to choose whether they wanted a card with both a chip and a magnetic stripe or just a chip. Personally, I would have chosen the latter option.
 

Doc Holliday

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the only time I had credit card hack issues was with using vending machines, and I don't do it any more.

Are vending machines that accept credit cards a common thing? I've only seen a few such machines in airports selling Apple products. Are these the type of 'vending' machines you are alluding to?
 

EagerBeaver

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It was a soda and drink vending machine in a public/State operated facility that accepted cash or credit, believe it or not, that led me to get an alert the next day from my Credit Card company or its identity theft department. It was the only time I had used that credit card in the prior 24 hours. I did not have any dollar bills or change, and I was dying of thirst, so I used a credit card swiped into the vending machine to buy a $1.75 bottled water. I got the alert of suspicious activity with my card from the credit card company the next day. I immediately cancelled that card and got one with a new number. My credit card company was very cool about the whole thing. It seems that it was a hack situation. I am guessing someone was tapped into the vending machine reading card numbers- probably an employee of the company that serviced the machine.

My office manager had a credit card hack occur with a Redbox DVD vending machine and she also stopped using credit cards in public vending machines after the incident. Someone actually made purchases with her card as a result of that hack.

The only other time I had a problem was back in the 1990s when I attended a real estate closing at a shady law firm in Westchester County. I did something really dumb. When I got to the law firm, I took off my overcoat and hung it on a coat rack in the lobby/waiting room area, forgetting that my wallet was in a a pocket of my overcoat and not in my suit jacket. After the closing I left the law firm and stopped to purchase gas on my way back to Connecticut. When I took out my wallet, everything was there but the credit card was gone, so I had to pay cash for the gas. Stolen, presumably by one of that law firm's seedy clients who saw my overcoat hanging in the lobby, and rifled through the pockets. It would have gone undetected because the coat was hung in a corner where nobody could see anything from the small window into the waiting room. Funny thing is that whomever stole my card went on a shopping spree and purchased a bunch of stuff at the Gap in Queens, NY, that same day. And I was nowhere near Queens that day - I was in Westchester County only for the closing. On that occasion my credit card company removed the charges from my account and cancelled it and gave me a new card number, but only after I provided a sworn affidavit as to the facts of what happened. My recollection is that the firm was representing some criminal clients and there were some individuals in that waiting room who looked like scumbags. It was of course on me for leaving my wallet in my overcoat.
 
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