The Credit Fraud Hall of Shame: 5 Crazy Credit Card Frauds Cases

Doesn’t it suck to have your credit card stolen?

There’s nothing more annoying than having your credit card frozen because some second-rate conman tried to buy $40,000 worth of computer monitors from a Micro Center in Jacksonville.

Annoying, yes. But the banks and credit card companies usually do a great job of putting a stop to and reversing any damage from credit card fraud.

Sometimes, a good enough fraudster can slip through the cracks and cause serious damage. Like, millions of credit cards and billions of dollars damage.

Let’s take a look at 5 of the craziest credit card fraud cases in credit card history.

1. CardSystems Solutions Inc.

CardSystems was a credit card processing company that left itself extremely vulnerable to hacking and oh boy, was it ever hacked.

In 2005, it was reported that 40 million credit card numbers had been stolen from CardSystems. This discovery led to another discovery that the company had been keeping unencrypted data that it was contractually obligated to delete.

This data was ripe for the picking, and when it went down, it was the biggest hack in history. A federal investigation ensued and, you guessed it, CardSystems Solutions folded. It was actually bought out by Pay By Touch, which folded a few years later.

2. Best Western Hotels

Best Western is one of the world’s biggest hotel chains. It’s also home to one of the biggest credit card fraud scandals ever.

A hacker from India broke into the hotel chain’s IT system and stole the addresses, phone numbers, and credit card numbers of all of its guests from the previous year.

All of these details were then sold to the Russian mafia, putting 8 million customers at risk of identity theft.

At the time, the damage was estimated at around 2.8 billion pounds.

3. Abraham Abdallah

Abraham Abdallah was a busboy that had aspirations fit for America’s rich and famous. Impossibly, Abdallah committed his fraud by picking up a copy of Forbes Magazine and choosing his victims from the top of the list of “richest people”.

He took their social security numbers, birthdates, home addresses, and credit card numbers. With early internet research and some ingenuity, he was able to attempt to use the credit cards of America’s richest celebrities.

Oprah, Spielberg, and Buffet were all targets. Unfortunately for Abdallah, he couldn’t bring these famous folks from riches to rags.

4. Porcelli & Kimoto

Peter Porcelli and Kyle Kimoto were old pals that prayed on the down and out. These two millionaires recruited a whole team of people to pose as representatives of large credit card companies.

Their plan was simple. All they did was cold call people with bad credit and give them a one-time offer of a “credit-repairing card” that cost only $160.00. 

They had a call list of 50 million people and 500,000 victims were estimated to have fallen for the trick. That works out to about $80 million if you do the math. The two were eventually caught and put in prison.

We hope those poor folks found a credit card for fair credit to get back on the right track.

5. Micro Charging

Maybe the most ingenious on this list is the micro-charging scam in Illinois back in 2010. In this one, scammers charged no more than $9 on a card and never charged the same card twice.

This resulted in around $10 million of fraud against 1 million victims. The money was moved to offshore accounts, and less than $100,000 was ever recovered.

Credit Card Fraud Cases Aplenty

These are just a few of the hundreds of bizarre, mindblowing, and expensive credit card fraud cases that have happened in the age of the internet.

We always think we’re safe, but no one knows what security measures are being taken to prevent fraud. Don’t trust anyone, least of all your credit statement. Always double and triple check your charges!

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