Latest debit card fraud schemes: Security breaches allow data theft, part one

In the last year, fraudsters have stolen data from thousands of debit card holders through merchants' and service providers' faulty cardholder data security systems and then cleaned out victims' bank accounts. In part one, we examine the latest schemes. 

In early 2006, Frank Condon, a retired University of Washington history professor, inserted his Wells Fargo Bank-issued Visa debit card and Personal Identification Number into an Automated Teller Machine in London and it was rejected. He had used it successfully six weeks earlier in Thailand and India. During a discussion with individuals at his branch and bank headquarters in California, Condon was told that the bank had put a hold on all ATM transactions in the UK. However, they had declined to inform their cardholders of the block because they did not want to "compromise [its] investigation."¹