Luck runs out for those caught in credit card scams

Whenever something can go wrong, according to Murphy's Law, it will.

For the uninitiated, a primer:

Important job interview? Illness.

Best man at a wedding? Car breaks down.

Long-awaited vacation? Honeymoon? Overbooked airplane.

And so on. I tried, fruitlessly, to find a local adage equivalent to this age-old saying by asking an Indonesian colleague.

He scratched his chin as he searched for a response. "Laws here don't really count," he chuckled ruefully.

Lady Luck may have noticed me the moment I put pen to paper last year for a newspaper article about the explosive phenomenon of credit card fraud in the U.S.

Boarding the Malaysian Airlines flight which delivered me to Southeast Asia in August, perhaps, sealed my fate.

Trouble arrived when the phone rang just after a recent midnight last month while I was still at work.

It was my credit card company.

Returning their call proved a challenge.

Up against the earnest, but accented, English of my Indonesian operator was the gaggle of operators, recorded, bubble gum- chewing and otherwise -- a common feature of free-market bureaucracy that is both grating and daunting for even the most leathery American credit card user -- that all must navigate when contacting a U.S. credit company.

At long last, I got through.

"Hello Mister Kirschke, my name is Lauren."

Lauren was a representative of my credit card company's Orwellian-sounding "Security and Fraud Department".

She informed me of some "inconsistencies" billed to my tattered-but-hologrammed blue Visa card, and "just wanted to check" that it was, in fact, I who had made the purchases.

Lauren said she had been alerted by some "suspicious activity" in the form of more than a dozen attempted, but rejected, charges "for a whole variety of things" from high-end clothing and expensive perfumes to jewelry, furniture, and electronic equipment.

In the end, only one purchase went through: a US$1,300 Toshiba laptop computer.

Something else caught her attention, too. The letters "T" and "TW" were listed alongside the name of the store where the item was apparently purchased. The transaction, we agreed, must have happened in Taipei, Taiwan.

I wondered, in my state of mild distress, how it all happened.

In Southeast Asia it happens all the time, said Lauren in a reassuring Texas twang which, after just a few months in Jakarta, suddenly sounded strangely exotic. "Indonesia is a name that comes up constantly."

Credit card fraud in this corner of Asia does indeed have a worldwide reputation, usually backed by tentacled organized crime syndicates, "with globalization as their mantra", said a recent article in the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Indonesia, Singapore and, worst of all, Malaysia -- all of which I have visited in the last four months -- are the worst places.

Small encryption devices now enable the unscrupulous to "swipe" credit cards with a discreet sleight-of-hand. The results are "cloned" cards, complete with pilfered names, addresses and other vital information, according to the National Economic Action Council (NEAC).

The con continues when the bogus cards are passed on to "recruits" -- usually in another country; most frequently, Taiwan -- with which to buy as many goods as they can, the NEAC said on its website, www.neac.gov. Whenever the card is rejected, the lackeys simply move on to another store.

In the end, the recruits are paid a commission based on the number of items they purchase; profits are generated when the goods are sold on the black market.

Credit card companies recommend a number of steps.

These include routine checks of one's credit card bills; never revealing the card's number to people you don't know; never letting anyone, even friends, borrow your card; and limiting credit card purchases to an absolute minimum.

Another, not-so-obvious measure includes ripping up things like preapproved credit card offers in the mail along with old checks, before throwing them out.

Luckily, all credit companies have insurance which absorbs the costs of the losses, along with the businesses that sold the goods, so that the losses are not passed -- much to my relief -- directly on to the customer.

Through both increased punishment and prevention, "authorities have been working closely with banks, retailers and merchants to ensure that the credit card menace is stamped out effectively", added the NEAC.

"But the battle is by no means won," added the Far Eastern Economic Review, quoting a security expert as saying that these poachers are forever "testing the limits of the system", and are "very high-tech -- right at the forefront of technology".

This assessment, I mused as I hung up the phone and began cutting up my card into tiny pieces, is all too true.

-- Joseph Kirschke