Master Criminal Steals $11,000 From Walmart Over The Phone

[rbcp]

From http://www2.nbc4i.com/news/2010/sep/06/2/suspect-steals-11k-phone-call-walmart-ar-224321/

According to police in Columbus, OH, someone called up a local Walmart around 1 a.m. on Sunday morning and "tricked a clerk" into activating money cards over the phone and giving the suspect the activation numbers.

When all was said and done, the criminal had helped themselves to $11,054.60 in money cards.

Wonder how the guy spent the money.  Couldn't they just deactivate the cards as soon as they figured out that they were tricked?  Were they Visa gift cards or Walmart cards or maybe Facebook or Xbox Live points?  I bet it was super easy to trick the employee to do this, I just don't understand how the money was spent without the cops being able to tell who spent it.

[Nod]

It SHOULDN'T be easy to trick the clerk into doing it. They're all trained NOT to activate any cards over the phone and NEVER do any kind of money transfers either. Whoever activated those is fired for sure. The company I work for had a rash of instances where a man was calling the stores and having clerks transfer money using Western Union. The guy was taking hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars at a time. I don't think they ever caught him either. I actually got to talk to him once. I'm not sure how he got people to do it as he was a horrible social engineer. When he said the wrong place for the company headquarters I told him that he gave the wrong place he immediately got hostile and then hung up.

[rbcp]

Wal-Mart employees aren't known for being quick.  It probably doesn't take long for them to forget the parts of their training that they don't deal with daily.  I'd really like to know if they fired that person. 

I checked the news sites today, but there's nothing new on it.  Maybe I should call that Wal-Mart and take some statements. 

[Nod]

Wal-Mart employees aren't known for being quick.  It probably doesn't take long for them to forget the parts of their training that they don't deal with daily.  I'd really like to know if they fired that person. 

I checked the news sites today, but there's nothing new on it.  Maybe I should call that Wal-Mart and take some statements. 

I'd say that's content for the phone show but everyone knows that there is no content on the phone show.

[rbcp]

http://www.storefrontbacktalk.com/social-networks/ohio-wal-mart-giftcard-thief-gets-11k-just-for-the-asking/ has a little more information on this Wal-Mart story, but not much.  Here's a couple quotes from the article.  I bet Wal-Mart is keeping quiet about it because they're afraid it's going to catch on and start happening everywhere.

"Earlier this month, a man called a 24-hour Wal-Mart in Columbus, Ohio, at 1 AM and told an associate he was with Wal-Mart’s IT department. The caller instructed the associate to activate gift cards, read him those card numbers and then scratch off the tape on the back of the cards so she could tell him the authorization codes, police said. And the associate obliged. Hours—and more than $11,000 in online fraud—later, the store realized it had been had."

"Wal-Mart had yet to indicate how it arrived at the very specific fraud figure of $11,054.60. Nor did the retailer say how many—or the nature of—the transactions involved. A Wal-Mart spokesperson on Wednesday (Sept. 22) also said she had yet to hear back from store officials about the incident’s particulars."

[Nod]

Lack of training is one thing but common sense should have told that employee not to do it. They should be fired regardless of whatever kind training program was or was not in place. They should also be forced to wear a dunce cap for a month.