10/27/2004
Business Identities Now Being Stolen
by Timothy Lee, Associate Extension Specialist, UALR Lead Center
Does your business accept credit cards? If not, then your business is suceptible to having its corporate identity being hijacked by thieves. In a new twist to personal identity theft, thieves are now stealing business identities and establishing corporate credit accounts in the business' name. At least 50 companies have been victims.
"First, credit card thieves find a legitimate company unlikely to already be accepting credit card transactions. They then impersonate that company and set up accounts with merchant processing providers, whose role it is to transfer funds between credit card companies and merchants.
Using stolen credit cards, the thieves then start sending small payments, usually $498 or $598 at a time, to the fraudulent merchant accounts. The credit card companies send funds to the processors and they in turn send the funds off to bank accounts controlled by the criminals."
In some case, the thieves have registered domain names and established professional websites to convince merchant account providers of the thieves legitimacy.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6175738/
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