More People Busted With Credit-Card Numbers From TJX Breach

from the cha-ching dept

Fri, Jul 13th 2007 10:39am — Carlo Longino

The Secret Service has busted four people in Florida, and recovered 200,000 credit cards from the TJX breach that was disclosed earlier this year. Recovering the credit-card numbers at this point does little more than link the fraudsters to the breach, but they're said to have been used to rack up more than $75 million in fraudulent charges. The people busted here didn't apparently participate in the theft of the credit-card data, but bought them from "known cybercriminals in Eastern Europe" and then used the numbers to make counterfeit cards. In any case, they're way more productive than another group of Florida scammers busted back in March, who only managed to rack up $8 million worth of goods at Sam's and Wal-Mart. Since banks get left holding the bag for this type of fraud, expect more lawsuits as they look to recover their losses from TJX's astounding level of incompetence.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: breach, credit card, security
Companies: tj maxx, tjx

6 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 13 Jul 2007 @ 11:27am

So let me get this straight...
Credit card customer data is stolen.
The theives use it themselves or sell it.
The thieves or the ones who tried to use the data are arrested.
Banks try to sue the credit card company is question

What I want to know (and I think I already do) is other than a free year of credit monitoring what will the people whose data was stolen (leaving them just as, if not more, victimized as the credit card company and the banks) get if this lawsuit were to go down in favor of the banks.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Chuck Norris' Enemy (deceased), 13 Jul 2007 @ 11:34am

Change your information
Luckily for me, I never shopped at TJ Maxx and now will never need to make a hard decision when the choice is before me, unless I have cash. Of course, if I had shopped at the store once and used my credit card, I would have immediately changed my credit card number(if it wasn't too late). That is, if I heard about it. I figure a lot of people buying discounted irregular clothing probably don't seek out financial or technical news. I would guess TJX didn't send out a notice to all those who had their info stolen. Of course not, they lost it!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 13 Jul 2007 @ 12:18pm

Re: So let me get this straight...
If the credit card company loses - the Bank will pocket the gain, the credit card company will charge more interest to make up the difference to keep the profit margins.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 13 Jul 2007 @ 7:27pm

its very simple.. require a password.. even on credit cards.. its not that hard to punch in a 4 digit code that the customer can change at will.. if your card or info is stolen you call and change the code..

its the ones who just wave thier credit cards without any type of checks by the cashiers that are getting you...

this way if there is a future breach and info is stolen..EVERYONE's CODE IS RESET! they must go online or call and change thier code before the card can be used again.. basic security vs having no security...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Dave, 16 Jul 2007 @ 1:49pm

It Happened to Me
We never really found out how someone hacked onto my computer at work, but someone got all of my creditcard and back logon info, and tried to get away with a couple of large transactions. Thankfully I found out before any real damage could be done.

Dave
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Dave, 16 Jul 2007 @ 1:50pm

It Happened to Me
We never really found out how someone hacked onto my computer at work, but someone got all of my creditcard and back logon info, and tried to get away with a couple of large transactions. Thankfully I found out before any real damage could be done.

Dave
[ link to this | view in thread ]