Even dormant credit cards affected by fraud

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Man gets two $100 charges on unused account

By Alex Bridges -- abridges@nvdaily.com

WINCHESTER -- Donald E. Kagarise suspected trouble when he received a bill for his AARP Visa credit card last week.

The Strasburg resident hadn't used the card since 2007, he said Thursday.

In fact, the account statement showed two separate charges of $100, each processed by an online photography company, Shutterfly.

"Well, at the time I didn't even know who Shutterfly was," Kagarise said. "So I called Shutterfly right away and they told me to call Visa and I called the bank. They took all the information and were gonna do an investigation."

Kagarise said that after he read the article published Thursday in the Northern Virginia Daily on a recent spate of credit card fraud complaints under investigation, he decided to file a report with the Internet Crime Complaint Center, or www.IC3.gov.

Kagarise and his wife took some financial advice and left some credit accounts open even though they no longer use them, he said. But now the couple plan to cancel the dormant accounts in the next few weeks, Kagarise said. The couple hadn't seen a bill for the AARP card for a while because it was idle.

"Finally I got a bill and, as soon I opened it up and saw those charges, I said, 'Where's that even from?'" Kagarise said. "So I called right away and they looked back and said, 'Oh my, you're exactly right.'"

The issuer handled the matter by canceling the card, sending the couple a new one and erasing the charges from the account, according to Kagarise. The couple lost no money.
But Kagarise said he still intends to file a report with IC3.

Authorities in Frederick County and Winchester currently investigating a rash of credit and debit card fraud reports began Wednesday to refer people with concerns about suspicious account activity to the website. A card holder should first report the possible fraud to the issuing company, such as a bank or business, then use that information when filing the claim on the website. Information collected by the site is sent to authorities in the areas where the customer lives and the fraudulent charge occurred.

Winchester Police Department and the Frederick County Sheriff's Office have received more than three dozen calls each reporting possible credit and debit card fraud. County investigators have responded to the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in response to many of the calls, but authorities say the business did not make the transactions and its management has been cooperating with the Sheriff's Office in the investigation.

However, many people, such as Kagarise, can relate even if they haven't used their cards at the Alamo or other area businesses.

"The minute I saw that many people had reported I wondered how many didn't report it, and I kinda thought, 'Man, there's a lot of people running into this, not just a few," Kagarise said. "I wonder how widespread it is."

Kagarise said he used cash the one time he went to the Alamo since it opened.
Winchester resident Dr. Leonard Yang said he received alerts as recently as Thursday of attempts to use his credit card accounts information -- $250 on a Mastercard at a Macy's in Canada and $1,000 on a Discover card at a Lowe's in California. In the earlier attempt with the Mastercard, someone appeared to have first tried it by making smaller purchases, he said.

Both attempts were denied by the companies, according to Yang.

But Yang said he didn't know if credit card companies automatically reported incidents to the IC3 or if the issuer depended on the customers to file.

"That would be helpful because they could identify patterns that way," Yang said. "I'm glad they had the algorithms that are sensitive but then I thought, 'Is anybody identifying for the authorities there's a pattern here or what?'"