Vegas – Thiefhunters in Paradise

Three-card monte expert Rod the Hop, R.I.P.

Rod-the-Hop, three-card monte, card mechanic, slot mechanic

They’s ony three kinda men I won’t play with: That’s a po’ man, a blind man, an a police-man!

Rod the Hop, my Las Vegas three-card-monte informer, died last month, aged 56. He was a card tosser whose demonstrations proved that drills teach skills for life. He set up in areas with less police presence, favoring the sidewalks outside large factories, especially on payday, “where there’s eight hundred people going to lunch and they have to walk by you,” he said.

“A real good spot is outside military bases, where you’ve got a lot of young, naïve kids with nothing much to do and a little bit of money to spend.

“The moves are easy. You can learn it in a day and be good in a week. It’s the presentation that’s important. You have to have unflinching audacity and unmitigated gall. I don’t get intimidated.”

I love the way Rod spoke.

He was renown as a “card mechanic,” which is a card manipulator, as entertainment and teaching, and/or cheating in card games. As a card mechanic, Rod the Hop worked both ends. He was loved by the worldwide magic community; and had four felony convictions for casino cheating.

He was also renown as a “slot mechanic,” which could mean slot machine repairman but, in Rod’s case, meant he was a convicted slot machine cheat. Just last year he had the honor of becoming person number 34 in Nevada’s Excluded Person List, aka “the Black Book.”

He told us he tore apart and studied slot machines in his apartment, so he had to use a friend’s place as his “official” address so his parole officers wouldn’t find them.

Travelers may encounter three-card monte games anywhere. Players are purposely given a glimpse of the target early in the scramble, a skillful slip is performed by the tosser, and players thereafter carefully track the wrong object with confidence.

I’ve called three-card monte a “game” but, like the three-shell game, they’re games of no chance: tricks and traps. You’ll see other players win and walk away, but they are, in fact, shills. You cannot win. If you win once, it’s at the tosser’s pleasure in hope you, or someone in his audience, will bet big.

Advice from a three-card monte expert

In the words of Rod the Hop

The object of three-card monte is to make money. Each person in the crew gets an equal end. Some days it’s good and—it’s a street game so obviously you can only make as much money as what a person has in their pocket. But if you make two or three hundred dollars apiece a day, then you’ve done what you set out to do. Most of it has to do with grift sense, and your con and your presentation. That’s more than the skill factor, I would say.

It’s just a hustle. I mean, you just do the best you can and you prey on tourists or suckers that don’t know they’re breathing air.

What I look for in a sucker is, they’ve got money, number one. And that they’re a sucker. I don’t have a conscious thought pattern that goes through my mind when I see a sucker. I know a sucker when I see one. I just do. I’ve been doing it so long, I know a candy bar when I see one. That’s all there is to it.

But by the same token, I know someone that’s not a sucker, or might be a cop, or somebody that knows the game. I can just feel it. I just know a sucker when I see one and my crew does too. You know that when you pick a crew. I don’t go out and say, yeah, he looks like a pretty good thief and has a lot of grift sense, I’ll get him. The deciding factor whether you have a good crew or a bad crew is how much grift sense all your partners have. But most of the time you’re not going to hook up with someone that doesn’t have grift sense.

You’ll find the game in the back of buses, train stations, things like that. Very seldom do you see it in the streets, cause if it’s windy it’ll blow the cards open.

I used to go outside a factory. Believe it or not, all you have to do is set up a box and start throwing cards and people will just stop by to see what you’re doing. You don’t have to say anything. Then you start betting with the shills. And pretty soon people get to realize that it’s a betting game. I’ll keep throwing it, and my shills will be betting, and they’ll be winning and the sucker sees them winning, and so they want to bet. And I might even let the sucker win some if I see other suckers that might have more money.

So, the red card’s on the bottom of the two cards and the black card’s on top. When I throw the cards down, I’ll throw the top card instead of the bottom card, which is the red card. But first, just to get into the rhythm of it, I’ll do it for real. I’ll throw the red card on the bottom, and let them watch where it is, very slowly, and they’re watching and wondering where the red card is. And there’s no question where the red card is.

And they’ll want to bet, so I’ll say, well here, let me do it again. And then I’ll pick them up and they’ll say, oh gosh, I was right. I knew where the red card was. And then I’ll do it again, and now they’ll want to bet. When I don’t want them to win is when I’ll throw the top cards. And then obviously they’ll lose.

You would think that a normal person would think, wait a minute, I knew where the red card was. I bet on it and I lost. Why? Well you’d think a guy would just quit. But no, not suckers. Suckers go, ‘wait, this time I’m really going to watch him.’ And then they’ll bet more money, and it just goes on and on until they don’t have any more money. So I try to entice as many suckers as I can to bet on it. Then, when everybody’s out of money, I take the cards, stick them in my pocket, and walk away. And then we’ll go somewhere else.

I’m where there’s people. Where there’s people there’s money, and where there’s money there’s me. And that’s where you do con games. You can’t do it if there’s no customers. Where there’s people, there’s suckers, and where there’s suckers, there’s people like me.

The reason people try to beat this game is because of the skill of the operator. It’s my presentation. I say, ‘look, I want to show you something.’ First off, I say ‘this isn’t three-card monte.’ Because then you’re thinking, this is not three-card monte. I tell them that you win on the red and you lose on the black. Now watch. Here’s a red card. I’m just going to set it right there. Then here’s a black card and I want to set it right there, and just switch them. Now where’s the red card? Will you bet on something like that? Well sure you would, if you were a betting man. But if you’re not a betting man, you’re not going to do it.

And this is a cliché that everyone uses, that you can’t beat an honest man. Well, you can’t beat someone that’s not trying to win your money. You can remember that. As a hustler, and doing the three-card monte, I cannot get my money from someone that’s not trying to get my money first.

This is a real old game, this three-card monte. I know it’s at least a hundred years old. It’s in a book a hundred years old, published in 1902. But each generation that’s never seen it before thinks they can beat it. There will always be suckers.

Look, three-card monte is a great little hustle in the street. And frankly, I don’t do it any more because there’s not enough money in it for me. It’s only as good as how much money a person has in their pocket at that time—right now. How many people walk around nowadays with eight hundred dollars in their pocket, or a thousand? Or even three hundred? You know what they got? They got about six dollars and fourteen credit cards. That’s what people have nowadays. They don’t carry around cash. The only people that carry cash nowadays are criminals.

The one good thing about three-card monte and the three-shell game and the short cons like that, is it’s a good training ground for con men, for grifters. It’s a prep school, if you will. Most people grow out of it.

If you’re a tourist and you see a three-card monte, don’t stop and look at it and think, well I know that he throws the top one sometimes and maybe sometimes he throws the bottom one, or whatever. I’m telling you right now. Do not play it. Cause it’s a guarantee, you cannot win. It’s simple as that. And that’s my advice. I can promise you, you cannot beat it. Just go on down the road when you see it.

Like Rod the Hop, Bob Arno, the famous pickpocket, is also known in and has deep knowledge of the worlds of magic and crime. Watching Rod work, Bob was impressed with his coolness, his social-engineering, his roping-in of “suckers.”

I was impressed with his patter. Here are a few of his lines, usually delivered in a rapid-fire drawl while his hands were flying and his mind was sizing up potential marks:

“This here ain’t no three card monte, this here’s the Mexican pitti-pat, where you win on the red and you lose on the black…

“Watch me now, I’m gonna race ’em and chase ’em, so watch where I place ’em…”

“If you gotta lotta nerve and you gotta lotta plenty, five’ll getcha ten and ten’ll getcha twenty…”

“I’ve played this game with Yankees and Southerners, Senators and Governors. Money on the card or no bet, where’s the red? If I can bluff you I can beat you. Come on bet five, bet ten! Ho down now, get your chicken dinner in the center, where’s the red?…”

[Thanks to Paul Chosse, who thought to put these lines in writing back in 2005.]

Rest in peace, Roderick William Dee.

Adapted from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Eight: Con Artists and Their Games of No Chance

Skimmers in bank doors

Ever use an ATM at a bank after hours? Was it inside a locked vestibule, where you had to swipe your bank card to unlock the door to enter the antechamber?

Chase Bank branches in and around Las Vegas have found card skimmers on their doors, enabling thieves to capture bank card info without tampering with the ATM at all. At the cash machines, all the thieves need are pinhole cameras to record the PINs.

And of course, alone and private in a locked bank foyer, who shields his PIN as it is poked onto the keypad?

Very clever thieves. Expect to find this latest technique at a bank near you.

More on skimmers:
Gas pump skimmers attached in 11 seconds.
Skimmers and credit card fraud.

bank credit card fraud skimmer thieves

A devious scorpion scam

Intruder on the loose. In the midst of all the excitement of the premiere of our National Geographic documentary, and all the television promotion that came from it, we’ve moved. From Las Vegas to the Phoenix area, from one desert to another, as if Vegas wasn’t hot enough for us.

The soundtrack at our Vegas house was primarily sirens, especially at night. These were often accompanied by the Doppler effect of percussive, droning police helicopters as they circled my neighborhood, even, seemingly, my house, with blinding searchlights flashing through my windows as if I might be harboring the criminal on the loose.

“Another criminal on the loose,” I’d always say. Between the sirens and helicopters, there was the pleasant, haunting whistle and distant rush of freight trains. That sound I liked.

In my new house, the audio is dominated by silence. I hear coyotes every night. They howl nearby and rush yipping in pack formation through my backyard. One bunny fewer hops through the yard at breakfast. I hear owls, too. And yes, I’ve seen the coyotes. Three of them together, waltzing across my backyard early in the morning.

Last week, walking toward my bedroom, I heard a crunch. Turning, I was horrified to see that I’d stepped on a giant scorpion. It must have fallen out of the rolled rug I was carrying. Yikes!

The scorpion was running in circles when I turned to see it. I should mention that, luckily, I was wearing moccasins at the time. I could have been barefoot. Even with soft shoes on, my left foot felt guilty and creeped out for hours afterward. As if I could feel the contact point.

I fled the scene to phone my nearby sister, who’s well-acquainted with these primeval exoskeletoned creatures, and who had her house “scorpion-proofed” after confronting too many of them.

“You left it unattended?!” she accused. “They’re very hard to kill. You probably only broke a leg or two. Cover it with a jar and a weight.”

I went back to examine the monster, remembering the live edible specimens I’d seen in Beijing earlier this year. It was a few feet away from where I’d last seen it, but still. Not moving. It seemed to be dead. I bravely stamped my foot loudly beside it. It didn’t move. I blew on it. Nothing. I snapped the photo above and left the house to get Bob at the airport.

“Watch out for the dead scorpion in the hall,” I told him, as he headed for the bedroom.

“Where?”

Gone! That was the moment I began to wish for the police helicopter searchlights. A giant scorpion on the loose. In my house. With reason to be vengeful. I wondered if I’d be able to sleep.

Obsessing on the fact my sister had mentioned: that they carry their babies on their backs. A whole brood could already be scampering into my shoes and sheets and up the curtains.

Two days later Bob found it. Dead, in the bedroom. Which is some distance from the site of the accident. Or was it the same scorpion…? Dead, it didn’t look so giant.

The next day I started when I saw a scorpion on the kitchen table. Bob had brought the mail in and a postcard peeked out from the bottom of the heap. It had a realistic photo of a scorpion on it, and advertised a scorpion extermination service. Hmmm… what a coincidence. Would a scorpion exterminator plant a few of the devils to scare new residents into its service? I tell you, it’s on the verge of working.

I cannot bang every shoe before I step into it. I cannot shake out the bed sheets every night, or scan the walls and ceilings for creepers. I can’t live like that. For now, I’ve decided to put them out of my mind and ignore them. At least until the spring, when they become more active. At least until I see another one.

And I’m saving that postcard.

Bambi Vincent Phoenix area

H&R Block reneges on promise, cops-out on client

When a giant corporation closes its shutters and bolts its doors against its own client, its like a reverse prison. I, the client, feel like a tiny, pesky ant searching for a chink in the fortress wall so I can shout in my small voice: “hear me, and respond without boilerplate.” I’m almost deafened by the fortress’s PA system which occasionally blares “NO. JUST NO.”

The fortress does not spend time formulating thoughtful replies or building strong arguments. Those mundane activities are not necessary for fortresses, which have shutters, boltable doors, huge legal departments, and very large boots for squashing pesky ants.

All this over $725.

Come to think of it, $725 is exactly the average fee I’ve paid H&R Block for tax preparation each year for the past ten years. (I don’t have handy our prior twenty years’ fees.)

H&R Block is using bully tactics. Its M.O. is to stand impenetrable and unresponsive while its clients exhaust themselves arguing H&R Block’s arbitrary defenses.

Apologies. I have not allowed this blog to become a platform for personal complaints. But wait a minute. The theme of Thiefhunters in Paradise is thieves, thugs, and gangsters… So this report fits.

H&R Block reneges on promise

scam

Gas pump skimmers attached in 11 seconds

Breaking news from Las Vegas Metro’s Kim Thomas, the fraud cop featured in my story on credit card skimmers hidden in gas pumps.

Detective Thomas writes:

I read the post you did with my picture. It was very impressive. At the end you said a thief attached a skimmer in eight minutes. I just wanted to give you a small correction. We found that the one on the side of the gas pump drawer was attached in about 11 seconds, so if you add in opening the door, you’re looking at about 30 seconds (and that’s us fumbling with the key). So here’s the process: put the key in the lock, open the door, slide out the drawer, unplug the two cables from the gas pump connectors (keypad and reader cables), slap on the device, plug the two gas pump cables into the skimmer, plug the skimmer cables into the gas pump connectors, slide the drawer in, close the outside door, turn the key, remove it, test with a known credit card (outside the process of hooking the skimmer because anyone seeing you do that would assume you’ve doing something legitimate. Sounds like a lot, but look at a watch, close your eyes, and envision the process, then look at the watch and see what kind of time you get. It’ll probably amaze you. Now imagine practicing it a bit on your own gas pump either in your storage unit or living room or buddy’s gas pump. Now you’ve gotten faster and smoother, so you’re faster. See?

Thomas continues on the frightening trajectory of credit card fraud:

This type of crime used to be done strictly by hi-tech crews, but now we’re seeing it done by Joe and Julie the tweeker people (common street criminals), the traditional black crews who used to be just check passers and bust-out crooks, and the Hispanic immigrant groups who have always supplied ID documents (to name a few groups). There’s just so much money and property in this.

A hotel loyalty card and its data showing on a skimmer

I just asked for a warrant on a member of a group of rich college kids (who bought a $7,500.00 watch in a high end Fashion Show Mall store) who have been buying numbers skimmed from American hotel chains in Europe, then using that track data to make counterfeits (this is a good way to do it because the cards are from American customers and less likely to raise a red flag with the bank looking at the transaction since it’s used in the US), which they then use at stores here, in SoCal, and in Arizona. They then take the property and sell it. The kicker is that all these kids are Mexican nationals whose parents are so wealthy they have their kids going to school at American Universities.

See our pickpocket summary page.

credit card fraud identity theft Las Vegas skimmer

Las Vegas real estate business ethics

Legal-but-dirty, beat-the-system, shady business is being committed by Las Vegas homeowners at the inducement of a real estate agent, as reported by Joel Stein in TIME magazine (8/14/09 issue).

[Real estate agent Brooke] Boemio specializes in short selling, in a particularly Vegas way. Basically, she finds clients who owe more on their house than the house is worth (and that’s about 60% of homeowners in Las Vegas) and sells them a new house similar to the one they’ve been living in at half the price they paid for their old house. Then she tells them to stop paying the mortgage on their old place until the bank becomes so fed up that it’s willing to let the owner sell the house at a huge loss rather than dragging everyone through foreclosure. Since that takes about nine months, many of the owners even rent out their old house in the interim, pocketing a profit.

“It’s greedy. But we’re all doing it. Because why not?” It’s very hard, she says, to suffer as the one honest person in a town of successful con artists.

I have no problem suffering as the one honest person in Vegas and I know many others who’d say the same. Boemio seems to be implying that she has given up honesty and joined the con artists of Las Vegas. In a blog about scams and cons, how can I not report this smelly business allegedly occurring in my own backyard?

First though, I’m wondering why banks extend loans to people who already have a hefty mortgage. How do they qualify? Easy, says a real estate lawyer I consulted. The buyer claims the new house will be owner occupied, while the old one will provide income from rent. While investor loans may be hard to get right now, those for owner-occupied houses are not. The fact that the borrowers can afford to pay their mortgage—they just don’t want to!—and default on the loan, choosing to give their money to another lender on a “better” deal is a question of ethics, not legality. If you’re a person of principle, you might have a hard time walking away from the promise you made to pay back your loan. If you’re a Vegas scumbag, or a con artist, or really, really hurting financially, there’s another option: you can simply skip on the loan. Because, why not?

Ever hear of the Golden Rule, Boemio? “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” What a simple way to fix the world.

Anyway, back to scams and cons. While the broker is scamming the system, she’s not committing fraud. The homeowners knowingly and temporarily destroy their own credit for the privilege of upgrading their homes and lowering their financial obligations. But otherwise, only the banks are hurt—and who pities the banks? It seems to be the state of Las Vegas and, actually, the state of the country. Look out for yourself. Get what you can. Screw the other guy.

This is practically the definition of kiasu, the Chinese-Singaporean attitude of “me first.” Bob and I spent much time in Singapore, but never quite got the hang of pushing to the front of the line, taking all the lychees on the buffet in case there were no more later, diving into a train before the departing passengers can get off, etc.

We’ve imported so much from Asia. Now we have kiasu, If you don’t believe in the Golden Rule, get the hang of kiasu. Because, why not?

Las Vegas scam Singapore

Skimmers and credit card fraud (more)

Credit card fraud: Would you notice if a skimmer were attached to an ATM? — Would you notice if a skimmer were attached to an ATM?

Skimmers, officially called magnetic card readers, capture the data on a card’s magnetic strip. Exactly what information is that?

Credit and debit cards have three “tracks” of data. Track 1 stores your name, account number and expiration date, and discretionary data to verify the PIN and security code. This information goes to the point of sale terminal, and allows your receipt to include your name and the last four digits of your account number.

Track 2 stores similar information coded and formatted specifically for the banking industry. This is the data that, from a merchant, goes to the bank via modem. Actually, it goes to an “acquirer,” a middle-man organization that authenticates the account data and guarantees payment to the merchant.

Track 3 was supposed to store biometrics, like a photo and thumbprint, but the banks decided it was too expensive to implement and do not use track 3 at all. It’s sometimes used on non-bank cards: airline cards, hotel and club memberships, etc. Track 3 is also writable.

Credit card fraud

Legitimate mag-strip readers are everywhere. Illegitimate ones, which I’ll refer to as skimmers, are, too. They may be stuck onto the faces of ATMs or gas pumps (possibly detectable). They may be attached to a merchant’s point-of-sale terminal (undetectable by customer, should be detectable by aware merchant). They have recently been found inside gas pumps (undetectable). Tiny, handheld models are used by waiters and others who swipe credit cards legitimately; they make an additional, criminal swipe through the portable skimmer.

Mag-strip readers are easily, legally purchased. The largest distributor is (no surprise) just outside Las Vegas. Bob met with the owner of the business, and bought a skimmer. The owner claims that his largest customers are schools and libraries, which buy in bulk in order to record attendance and keep track of books. I’ve heard from law enforcement that his biggest customer is the FBI, which buys skimmers, encodes them with trackable ID, and lets them fall into the wrong hands.

Our skimmer, pictured below, captures all three data tracks. Bob could have bought one half the size with twice the storage and a bluetooth interface for twice the price. The kind just pulled from the apron of a waiter at a high-end restaurant at Caesar’s Forum in Las Vegas—a restaurant frequented by a celebrity clientele (i.e. high-limit credit cards).

Whether obtained by an employee using a handheld skimmer, or one attached to stationary equipment, card data is gathered and stored, then collected by wired download or wireless transmission. Then what?

Someone called “afterlife” wrote:

Credit card theft is a growing problem but it does not happen the way most people envision it.Â It’s not the lone hacker who goes it alone to compromise one site and sell the credit card numbers to fraudsters.

These days it’s a network of carders who each have a specific role.Â Roman Vega of Boa Factory fame was known for having lawyers, botnet owners, hackers, traffickers, and pushers all on staff.Â These days the professional carder will knock over several merchants and store the information without using it for up to two years.Â Once they have amassed enough information they join the databases together forming a master datasheet on peoples lives.

Once they join databases with your credit card number and others with your e-mail address they can perform ‘spear phishing’ where they send you a targeted e-mail, with your credit card number, asking for your PIN number.

Credit card fraud: Portable magnetic card reader, aka skimmer. — Portable magnetic card reader, aka skimmer.

Credit card fraud is highly organized, en masse. Besides phishing and spear phishing, data is also written to new cards. These new cards can be blank stock, stolen cards (where sometimes the encoded data does not match what is printed—but who notices that?), gift cards, or shared-value cards. Mag-strip writers can be purchased as easily as mag-strip readers; and some models of readers just need a little extra software in order to write.

Everything one needs for credit card fraud can be learned or purchased on “carder sites.” Skimmer “dumps” are sold in lots, with payment made via Western Union. Here’s a typical “ad,” found among Afterlife’s blog comments (link above). This one’s about six months old:

The Best Dumps for a Good Price. Selling USA.
Hello dear friends. I’m a Memfis.
I have USA dumps, and some Asian.…¨I have a good price for it:
USA…¨20 USD CLASSIC, MASTER…¨25 USD VISA GOLD…¨30 USD VISA PLATINUM AND BUSINESS
ASIA…¨80 USD CLASSIC, MASTER…¨100 USD PLATINUM
I have my own base, good approval percent …“ about 90%…¨USA and Asia …“ 101 only. But I dont have EU bins.
USA …“ original track2.…¨Asia …“ both tracks are original, track1 and track2.
Payment is Western Union.…¨I’m sending order only after recieving payment, in 3-24 hours.…¨I have a replace pocily, but i should know what cards declined or holdcall in 24 hours, to replace it, in other time i wont replace.
For real buyers:…¨I can proove my quality, message me my ICQ.

Credit card fraud: Latest ATM skimmer, with measurement in centimeters. — Latest ATM skimmer, with measurement in centimeters.

Here’s a good thing: some of these gizmos hidden in gas pumps cause the pump to fail, so they’re found. But there’s bad news, too. Data from skimmers slyly hidden in gas pumps and other good places is often not used for three or four months. Why ruin a good thing if the skimmer is steadily transmitting account numbers and PINs? When credit card holders start reporting fraud, the common merchant on the victims’ accounts will be investigated and the device will be pulled. Has your card already been skimmed? Has mine?

Read our summary page of pickpockets, thieves, scammers, and skimmers.

credit card fraud identity theft Las Vegas skimmer

High-tech identity theft today

…¢ Identity theft is now the number one crime in the world.
…¢ Las Vegas is number one in the U.S. for ID theft; even though it’s estimated that only 20% of the crimes are reported.
…¢ The FBI estimates that seven out of every ten stolen dollars end up in Las Vegas. There’s more money in Vegas than most places. Hence Vegas’s place at the top of the ID theft heap.

These wispy facts were spit out by Las Vegas Metro Police Department Forgery Detail’s Detective Kim Thomas at the start of his recent identity theft presentation. Then he got to the scary stuff.

I recently wrote about “profiles,” the findable bits of personal information about an individual. A utility bill constitutes a profile, though not as good of one as a loan application. Envelopes, receipts, statements, are others.

Detective Thomas emphasized the importance of shredding all documents before discarding them. Then he pointed out how something as simple as a discarded box can trigger both a burglary and ID theft. He gave the example of a resident getting a new plasma tv. A trawling thief spots the box at the curb on trash day. He watches the house and notes when it’s unoccupied. Then he steals a truck, kicks in the front door (that’s how they break in nowadays, Det. Thomas explained; no finesse involved), grabs the tv—and the pile of bills in the kitchen at the same time. “Even a box has value to someone,” he said. “Cut it up.”

We can shred.

We can break down our discarded boxes, or take them to dumpsters.

We cannot control how businesses store and discard our data. (My own little example: I went to a health clinic where patients are given forms on clipboards to fill out and return to the desk. When I returned to the unattended desk with my completed forms, I stood staring at other patients’ medical histories and Social Security numbers on the clipboards they’d left on the desk as instructed.)

Credit card data skimmer: the size of a Bic lighter.

But here’s the big thing now: skimmers. Wait! You think you know, but I’m about to describe the very latest in skimmers; not the deck-of-cards-sized box in a waitress’s apron, not the big old multi-part plastic set-ups of yesterday stuck onto ATMs. If you’re not sure exactly what a skimmer is, read the three little paragraphs of my previous post. In the old days (not very long ago), waiters and store clerks were given skimmers to swipe credit cards through and they were paid for the data they collected. But a waiter might talk if caught. A store clerk will be watched if suspected, leading police to the skim-master. And how many cards can they skim in a day, anyway?

Old news: nowadays, skimmers are attached to the fronts of ATMs and gas pumps. Yeah, we know. But you probably don’t know how impressive the latest version is. It’s tiny: 3.5 inches long, by a half inch by a quarter inch. It’s almost impossible to detect. It contains batteries charged by an induction plate and stores data on a camera memory card. It attaches to a thin number pad overlay to capture PINs, and as a secondary method, also has a motion-activated video camera (jury-rigged from a high-end mobile phone) which is time-tagged to match up with the right credit card info. It has a bluetooth transmitter that allows remote, anonymous downloads, which means the skim-master doesn’t have to go near the scene of the crime, once the thing is installed.

About 40 of these tiny self-contained data-collectors have been recovered in Las Vegas in the past month. Probably more by now. Certainly more still out there, too.

Where do you get your gas?

Yes, they’re still stuck onto the fronts of ATMs. But they’re also put inside gas pumps. How do you open a gas pump? Use the same key that opens an RV storage locker, five bucks online. LVMPD found that one of these skimmers can be installed in eight minutes flat. Which, they figure, means the skim-master can probably do it in seven.

Edited 3/15/10 to add: Detective Kim Thomas explains how skimmers are hidden inside gas pumps in about 11 seconds. Yes, 11 seconds!

Yes, there’s more to tell.

credit card fraud identity theft Las Vegas skimmer

ID theft buffet

A former mortgage broker put 40 boxes of customers’ personal information into a Las Vegas dumpster. It was December 2006, but we all knew enough about identity theft already to know better. The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003, effective in 2005, requires the proper disposal of consumer report information and records, as does state law.

The boxes were found and put into safekeeping, probably before any documents were stolen from them. The Las Vegas Sun reported that the boxes contained “tax returns, mortgage applications, bank statements, photocopies of credit cards and drivers’ licenses, at least 230 consumer reports, and other documents containing sensitive consumer information.” Only now is the Federal Trade Commission charging former mortgage broker Gregory Navone with violating the Act.

Five gone-bust mortgage brokers dumped documents at around the same time—five that we know of. We can assume that many others dumped docs too, or deserted their premises complete with documents, which were left for the bad guys to find. No wonder Las Vegas is at the forefront of fraud and identity theft.

Bob and I recently spent many hours with a tweeker (meth-addict) during one of her clean and coherent spells. I’ll call her Kristin, because I can’t use her beautiful, real name. The time was just between her release from jail and her next bust. She had a job, her family had taken her back in and were supportive, and she was poring over a university catalog. She was full of hope and determination.

But the boyfriend…. Still in prison, a meth-cooker and ID thief, due out soon, demanding daily phone calls to keep his girl tied to the old life…

Right. He got out and Kristin disappeared. Back into the cycle of drugs and ID theft. We could have cried for her, this pretty 21-year-old. She was smart, but not strong enough to resist the lure of meth and easy money.

When she was high, she told us, she knew she’d never be caught; she was too clever. She knew she was going to get caught; she was always looking over her shoulder. Confident and paranoid.

In those hours we spent with Kristin, she told us how she used to “get profiles.” A profile is information about a person. It doesn’t have to be much because with a little goes a long way. With a little, you can find the rest.

Her favorite way to get profiles was out of dumpsters located behind businesses. She’d also get quick-credit apps from insiders in casino booths, who’d allow her to take a few off the top on the way to the shredder. Car registrations were good, too, easily found in glove compartments.

With the profiles, she created IDs. First simple ones, just good enough to allow her to purchase the special inks and papers needed to print government IDs. She had the precious printer, but supplies for it are regulated. For Kristin, easy to get around with a simple fake ID, a sweet smile.

With her newly minted IDs and profiles (for herself and her pals), Kristin and her team leased cars. Cadillac SUVs, to be specific, whatever they’re called. They always drove the latest models. They had an endless source of identities, cash, and credit.

They lived in motels, where they set up their mobile meth labs. Kristin, just the clean-up girl in the operation, got too close to the fumes once and got chemical burns on her face, neck, chest, hands, and arms. She was scabbed over for a year. She pointed out the scars, and the thick makeup she wore on her face to minimize them.

In a moment of desperation, Kristin once grabbed the profile of a wealthy family friend from her father’s home office. Tears trickled down her cheeks as she told us how she destroyed the man’s credit—and her father. Because he knew. She was ashamed of herself; mortified. Now she recognized that she was out of jail on an incredibly lucky break. She was going to study to become an architect. She was going to return to ballet.

Kristin’s back at it again, getting profiles, getting cash and credit on other people’s good histories, wreaking havoc. She and how many others?

Many people tell us they’re afraid to shop and bank online. But these activities are not a big factor in identity theft. The real threat is out of our hands. It’s how others keep our information. Big businesses with databases. Small businesses with manila folders. Mom & pops with a property to rent and an old box of rental apps (as I recently found in my garage—and shredded).

One man’s garbage is another’s fortune. Kristin and her friends are ready to exploit that old, forgotten information.

But there’s worse. Much worse. I’ll write about that soon.

identity theft Las Vegas

Sloppy business at UPS

Four days away from an international trip and Bob and I have no passports. Scary. They were perfectly good and valid still for five years, until they were punctured and made invalid by Federal agents in Los Angeles. The only thing wrong with them was that they had too little space for new immigration stamps. We’d both received additional page inserts multiple times, and now we were required to get new passports.

Fine. All we needed was enough time to send them in, or better yet, bring them in and get them while we wait. That’s the tricky part, given that there is no passport office in Las Vegas. And our itinerary is packed with international trips, so there’s no time to send them in for replacement.

Time for a trip to Los Angeles, then. We gave two presentations at the California Tourism Safety and Security Conference in Anaheim May 7. Perfect timing for a visit to the passport office.

In Las Vegas, we prepared by getting official passport photos. Official, to be certain they’d be the right size, with the right background, etc. No time for mistakes. We used the “official passport photo service” at the local UPS store. When the lackadaisical employee handed over the two pairs of photos, Bob and I gawked. Our heads were small, surrounded by lots of white space, the images were contrasty, and almost black & white.

“These look terrible,” we said.

“They’re fine,” the employee assured us. “We do this all the time. Our photos are never rejected.”

We reluctantly paid $10 each and left.

The U.S. Passport Office rejected the photos. It didn’t take much time to get new ones at the handy passport photo service just outside the Federal Building. The new ones were bright, clear, and large. We had our new passports several hours later.

Back at the UPS store, I complained and asked for a refund. The same slovenly employee shuffled off to the back room, unsure how to react. His mono-tasking mind forced him to set aside the job he was about to do: namely, sort customers’ mail into their rented mailboxes. So he set the thick stack of envelopes on the counter beside me and left me alone with it. I stood staring at the gas bill on top of the stack, wondering what could be gleaned from that heap were I an ID thief. I had plenty of time to consider the lack of security with which that mail was handled.

The manager (or franchise owner) appeared and, when I pointed out the stack of mail, said “puh-lease!” As if she had no idea that Las Vegas is at the forefront of fraud and identity theft. Or that her mailbox-rental customers had some expectation of the private and secure handling of their mail.

identity theft Las Vegas

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