Police make first arrests in Heartland breach case

US police have made the first three arrests linked to the Heartland Payment Systems data breach.

The Florida-based men were apprehended after using stolen credit card numbers to make fraudulent purchases at local Wal-Mart stores.

The men are alleged to have been using the purloined numbers to electronically encode Visa Gift Cards which were then used to make fraudulent purchases at local businesses.

In a statement issued by the Leon County Sheriff's Office, the card numbers used by the group were stolen in the "international computer hijacking" of records from the Heartland Processing Centre in New Jersey.

The total actual and declined fraudulent transaction in Leon County is currently in excess of $100,000. "This amount is expected to be much higher as this investigation continues," the police say.

Related Companies

Heartland Payment Systems

Channels

Retail banking Security Payments

Comments: (2)

A Finextra member 16 February, 2009, 17:37

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Hence, this isn't white plastic fraud and no pincodes breached since they had to manufacture visa gift cards and use them to buy in Walmart.

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A Finextra member 19 February, 2009, 09:08

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So what ? The Heartland system has been hacked, and private data has been stolen which was used to subsequently produce fake gift cards. That's a genuine security breach - something that needs to be prevented, and also another proof point that IT security is in poor shape and needs improvement.

Whether or not PIN's were stolen or decrypted is a secondary issue ...