Downtown Chicago, are wondering exactly this. The recent fraud events in Itasca are not from online hackers but targeted, quiet neighborhood local ATM machines. Card readers are being replaced with what they call “card skimmers.” A fake card reader that is placed directly over the original one and can look identical without a trace. They store all the credit card numbers that get inserted and in some of the cases, the ATM machines that had card skimmers also had a very tiny camera planted above the PIN keypad to record the holder typing in their PIN. Thinking of safety yet?
Ian Leaf, a professional fraud detective, specializes in analyzing and evaluating situations where a person or businesses financial security is at risk, and the Ian Leaf Corporation did just this in DuPage County. Ian was in Itasca touching base with a bank client when he was informed about local reports of suspicious transactions on bank accounts. Well being a small town has it’s perks and it wasn’t long until neighbors discovered multiple people on their block were all victims of fraud. Instantly their first reactions were to chop-up all their credit cards, inform their banks, and re-issue new cards like its all said and done. Well lucky enough, while those new cards were being held-up in mail transit doomed to be used at an ATM, Ian Leaf had a theory. After understanding all the reports of fraud were coming from just one single town, he knew something was missing. Ian figured that it was very unlikely a hacker collected all the credit cards from neighborhood IP addresses, as the security levels with stored financial information online are very difficult to crack. Itasca being a small town, he thought the fraud must be coming from a local place that gets the most used credit card transactions, like a grocery store or gas station, or even better, an ATM machine! From researching about a similar case in Prague, Czech Republic, Ian put it all together that the fraud could very possibly be a card skimmer at an ATM machine. And he was right. Ian uncovered 3 ATM machines in Itasca that were tricked with card skimmers and PIN cameras and reported them to the local banks and the issue was resolved in no time.
No matter what size city we live in, there is always room for fraud and the case with Itasca shows that not only can small towns be targets of fraud just as well, but they also need the same quality security the big cities get, and Ian Leaf Corporation supplies nothing less that that.
