Debit card fraud growing

SEATTLE – Debit card fraud in the Seattle area is growing, and law enforcement officials say thieves are becoming more resourceful.

“The con game’s been around for a long time, but now the con game’s gone high tech,” said Agent Tim Wood of the Seattle field office of the Secret Service.

More local residents have been victimized by international ATM thefts in the past several months, possibly in connection with a major security breach at a local office supply store.

“The current rash from Seattle on down to L.A. is really large,” said Earl Wismer of the San Francisco Police Department.

Authorities say the thieves are using a variety of methods to steal debit card information, so consumers must be especially vigilant. Most of the thefts involve mysterious ATM withdrawals in other countries, so officials recommended debit card users keep a close eye on their bank statements to watch for unauthorized withdrawals.

Wood said some of the methods thieves use to steal debit card information include skimming devices at ATMs and gas pumps, database hacking and phishing for information with unsolicited e-mail, said Wood.

In the latest high profile case, debit card information for as many as 200,000 customers of OfficeMax may have been compromised, the San Francisco Chronicle reported this week. The breach led the West Coast’s largest banks, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Washington Mutual, to reissue debit cards to customers involved.

OfficeMax spokesman Bill Bonner told the Chronicle that he did not think the breach occurred in Northern California.

Betty Reiss, a spokeswoman for Bank of America, said as soon as her bank discovered something was wrong, they took action, including sending replacement debit cards to many customers.

“Security for our customers is top priority,” she said.

In San Francisco last month, police recovered a magnetic stripe reader and digital camera from a major bank’s high-traffic downtown ATM. A similar device was found around the same time in Sacramento. Two more devices have been recovered since then from elsewhere in California.

A year ago, Bellevue police found an ATM skimming device on a Boeing Employees Credit Union machine at the Evergreen Shopping Center, police spokesman Greg Grannis said. A man using the ATM called police when a faceplate from the machine fell off into his hands, Grannis said.

Police found the device contained a magnetic stripe reader powered by a battery, and was affixed to the ATM with tape.

ATM fraud is not all that unusual, Grannis said. Bellevue police take reports of checking account fraud “only on days that end in ‘y.’ “