A sophisticated scheme to steal credit card numbers from a Zachary business could result in mass credit card cancellations in the Baton Rouge area, a federal official said Thursday.
U.S. Attorney David Dugas said a rash of unauthorized credit card charges reported in Zachary and Jackson that appear linked to the same business has been neutralized, but not before thousands of credit card numbers were stolen over the course of a year.
Sammy Nagem, of Sammy’s Grill in Zachary, said Thursday that since the beginning of January, some of his customers have been complaining about unauthorized credit-card charges after patronizing the restaurant.
Around the same time, police in Zachary and Jackson noticed an increase in credit card-related complaints.
In Jackson, Police Chief Mitch Giroir said his department normally receives a handful of credit fraud complaints each week. Since the end of last year, however, the department has received more than 200 such complaints.
In Zachary, it’s the same story.
Police Chief David McDavid said he has gotten more than 20 credit fraud complaints in the past three weeks. Some of the unauthorized charges have come from as far away as France and Italy, he said.
Both departments submitted their evidence to the U.S. Secret Service.
Nagem said he hired an investigative firm to determine how his business was targeted.
Those investigators, with help from the Secret Service, determined that hackers from remote locations had compromised his restaurant’s credit-processing software.
Nagem, who operates another restaurant on Highland Road, said the problem was isolated to the restaurant in Zachary and has since been fixed by the installation of new software.
But the damage may already have been done.
Federal investigators believe the people responsible may have been operating silently for up to a year, stockpiling thousands of credit card numbers before beginning to use them recently — a technique that is difficult to trace, Dugas said Thursday.
“Once they start using them, they know the clock is running,” Dugas said. “They’ll get as much use out of them as they can until people start to notice.”
Schemes like the one in Zachary that don’t involve employees are rare, he said.
In the coming weeks, Dugas said, local banks will begin canceling and replacing credit and debit cards to prevent further losses.
The cancellations, he said, are being used as a precaution and don’t necessarily mean a card has been compromised.
To protect against credit-card fraud, Dugas said, it is important to monitor credit statements and immediately report suspicious activity to banks or credit card companies.


Source: The Advocate