2 Mexican citizens nabbed at Texas border in Target credit card fraud case

CBP officers arrest two Mexican nationals with over 100 alleged fake credit cards

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MGN ONLINE

Monday, January 20, 2014 - 1:27pm

ANZALDUAS, TX (CBP) — Officers with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Office of Field Operations (OFO) at the Anzalduas International Bridge arrested a male and female from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico who were wanted for credit card abuse from McAllen, Texas.

“These two fugitives were detected by our CBP frontline officers due to our ability to query everyone seeking to enter the United States at our ports of entry,” said Efrain Solis Jr., Port Director, Hidalgo/Pharr/ Anzalduas. “Having access to law-enforcement databases allows us to apprehend outstanding fugitives for other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.”

On Sunday morning, January 19, 2014 a white Nissan Sentra driven by Mary Carmen Vaquera Garcia, a 27-year-old Mexican citizen from Monterrey arrived at the Anzalduas-Reynosa International Bridge.

Accompanying her was Daniel Dominguez Guardiola, age 28, also from Mexico and both presented their Mexican passports with U.S. visas. A CBP officer received an initial primary possible match and referred both travelers to secondary for further inspection. In secondary and with the use of biometric verification, CBP officers confirmed the identity of both persons as well as active arrest warrants for both from the McAllen Police Department, for credit card abuse.

Apparently, both individuals had been involved in credit card misuse/abuse where fraudulent or alleged cloned cards had been utilized to make purchases at local retail stores in McAllen. At the time of arrest, CBP officers discovered close to 100 alleged fake credit cards in their possession.

Both travelers were arrested by CBP-OFO and subsequently released to the custody of the McAllen Police Department.

http://www.ktsm.com/news/cbp-officer...e-credit-cards

1. Target credit card fraud suspects arrested at Texas border
   
   CBS News ‎- 1 hour ago
   Two Mexican citizens were arrested Sunday after allegedly trying to ... found the 96 cloned or counterfeit credit cards under their clothes.

Cards From Target Breach Being Sold in Custom Sets, Police Say

New York Times

- ‎5 minutes ago‎

McALLEN, Tex. — Account information stolen during the Target security breach is now being divided up and sold off regionally, a South Texas police chief said on Monday following the arrest of two Mexican citizens who the authorities say arrived at the ...

Police: Monterrey couple went on spree in RGV using card numbers stolen in Target breach

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Mary Carmen Garcia

Posted: Monday, January 20, 2014 7:27 am | Updated: 9:37 am, Mon Jan 20, 2014.
Ildefonso Ortiz | The Monitor

Posted on January 20, 2014

McALLEN — As they drove over the Anzalduas International Bridge on Sunday morning, Mary Carmen Garcia and Daniel Dominguez could have passed for any of the thousands of Mexican tourists who visit the Rio Grande Valley each week.

But the Monterrey couple represented a different kind of tourism, authorities say.

Garcia and Dominguez have been accused of being part of a group of sophisticated credit card cloners who have been linked to December’s Target security breach. During that breach, unknown individuals — possibly from Eastern Europe — allegedly broke into the retailer’s computer system and made off with nearly 100 million credit card numbers.

Garcia and Dominguez ended up using some of those numbers during a Jan. 12 shopping spree, said Victor Rodriguez, McAllen police chief.

About 7 a.m. Sunday, Garcia and Dominguez rode a white Nissan Sentra to the inspection booth where U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers matched the Monterrey couple to some outstanding warrants from the McAllen Police Department, according to a prepared CBP statement.

During the arrest, authorities found more than 100 cloned cards hidden within the couples’ clothing.

Using forged licenses from the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon with the names Judith Garcia and Ivan Garcia, the two intended to use the more than 100 cloned credit cards with the same names, Rodriguez said.
The two suspects were expected to be formally charged Tuesday morning.

FRAUDULENT ACTIVITY

The case against Garcia, 27, and Dominguez, 28, began Jan. 12 after several banking institutions contacted the McAllen Police Department to report fraudulent credit card activity, Rodriguez said Monday afternoon.
During that weekend, Garcia and Dominguez went to various retailers, purchasing a number of high-end electronics which added up to several tens of thousands of dollars, Rodriguez said.

“This is why we ask our retailers to be aware,” the chief said. “If you have a customer that gets a card and it gets declined, then he gets another one and another one and goes through a dozen until it clears, you should call someone.”

As part of the investigation into the fraud police detectives teamed up with the U.S. Secret Service and were able to confirm that the account numbers used during that shopping spree matched the numbers that had been stolen during the Target security breach.

“Using the numbers and the time and place of the purchases, we were able to go back to the retailer’s surveillance footage and we were able to find a suspect vehicle,” Rodriguez said. “Using that vehicle, we checked with (the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) to track down the vehicle, and with their help we were able to identify these two individuals and secure warrants for their arrest.”

THE HACK

Once in police custody, Garcia and Dominguez told investigators how they had been able to make those cards.

“We have reason to believe that these two individuals are part of a much larger fraud conspiracy,” Rodriguez said.

The individual or individuals behind the Target hack have been selling the information in sections by region. The couple in custody had been communicating with the overseas hackers, and using the card information they purchased, they made a series of bank cards with false names as well as empty gift cards, the chief said. They did this by overwriting the encoding in the magnetic strip with the information from the hacked accounts.

Since it has been more than a month since the highly publicized hack, many customers have already taken protective measures with their accounts, Rodriguez said. The information from the hack has become perishable, leading authorities to believe that the hacker or hackers will try to sell them fast, which could lead to similar cases.

McAllen has already seen its share of fraudulent credit card groups. In mid-January 2013, McAllen police working with federal authorities arrested three men, who’d been using purchased credit card information and re-encoding card templates in an almost identical fashion to the one used by Garcia and Dominguez.

In July 2012, McAllen police and Secret Service agents arrested Mario Wong, a Monterrey man who along with co-conspirators had used counterfeit cards to draw more than $130,000 from ATMs under threat of torture by the Zetas, court records show.

http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/article_99f78ff6-81d6-11e3-9406-001a4bcf6878.html

BUSINESS

Mexican duo arrested in Target data breach

By Kaja Whitehouse
January 20, 2014 | 9:54pm

Target shoppers may not be a jet-setting bunch — but at least their credit card numbers are seeing the world.

Days after a cyber-security firm tied the massive retail hack that hit as many as 110 million Target shoppers to Russia, police in southern Texas arrested a man and a woman from Mexico in connection with the heist.

Mary Carmen Garcia, 27, and Daniel Guardiola Dominguez, 28, both of Monterrey, Mexico, were nabbed by federal and local agents as they crossed into the US on Sunday, according to the McAllen, Texas, police department.

The duo were caught with 96 counterfeit credit cards that, police said Monday, are believed to be linked to the Target security breach that quietly stole debit card numbers and other personal data as they were swiped through check-out readers at the discounters’ stores.

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Daniel Guardiola DominguezPhoto: AP

The two alleged perps racked up tens of thousands of dollars in bills last weekend at Toys ‘R’ Us, Walmart, Best Buy and other retailers, McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez said at a press conference.

The purchases were made using account numbers of folks who live in south Texas, Rodriguez said. The police chief said he believes the stolen information is being sold regionally.

Cops teamed up with agents from the Secret Service and Homeland Security to track the culprits. After working all week to identify the alleged thieves, the lawmen arrested the duo at about 7 a.m. as they made their way back into Texas for another shopping spree, Rodriguez said.

“Someone in Mexico is obviously mining that data [obtained in the Target security breach] and producing the cards,” the police chief said.

California cyber-security firm IntelCrawler recently said it tracked the author of the malware, or malicious software, used in the Target heist to hackers from St. Petersburg, Russia, who have been selling it for around $2,000 a pop.

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Mary Carmen GarciaPhoto: AP

IntelCrawler, in a report Friday, fingered a 17-year-old as the architect of the malware.

On Monday, it issued an updated report that said the teenager was simply acting as “technical support” for a second Russian man, who it is now identifying as the author of BlackPOS, as the malware is known.

Meanwhile, cyber-security expert Brian Krebs has said the author is a Ukrainian resident.

Even if the identity of the malware’s architect is in dispute, the fear that other retailers could be at risk is not.

Last week, security firm iSight Partners, of Dallas, which is working with federal authorities on the cyber attack, said the software is sophisticated enough to cover its own tracks so that retailers may not even know they’ve been robbed.

Meanwhile, the US could find itself at a loss to hold the people behind it responsible, experts said.

“Not when they are in these jurisdictions,” said Dan Clements, president of IntelCrawler. “These people have coverage” from US laws, he said, speaking of Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DAZSCELBdY

http://nypost.com/2014/01/20/mexican...t-data-breach/

2 nabbed at Texas border in credit card fraud case

By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
January 21, 2014



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McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez points at dozens of fraudulent credit cards that were confiscated by McAllen police after arresting a man and a woman tied to the December Target credit card breach.

McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Two Mexican citizens who were arrested at the border used account information stolen during the Target security breach to buy tens of thousands of dollars' worth of merchandise, according to a South Texas police chief.

But a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service said Tuesday that an investigation is ongoing into the possibility of a link between the Target data breach and the arrests in Texas.

One day earlier, McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez said Mary Carmen Garcia, 27, and Daniel Guardiola Dominguez, 28, both of Monterrey, Mexico, had used cards containing the account information of South Texas residents stolen from Target. Rodriguez said they were used to purchase numerous items at national retailers in the area including Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Toys R Us.

"They're obviously selling the data sets by region," Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez did not immediately return calls for comment Tuesday.

In an email, Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary said: "The U.S. Secret Service continues to work closely with affected parties and law enforcement to investigate the Target breach. In regards to the arrests announced yesterday, the Secret Service is working with the U.S. Attorney's Office and McAllen Police Department to determine if there is any connection."

Garcia and Guardiola were both being held Tuesday on state fraud charges. It was not immediately known whether they had retained lawyers.

Rodriguez said he did not know whether these arrests were the first related to the Target breach.
Asked about the McAllen arrests, Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder said in an email Monday that the investigation was active and ongoing.

"I'd have to refer you to local law enforcement there for any questions about their community," she said. The Minneapolis-based company said last week that it has stopped more than a dozen operations that sought to scam breach victims by way of email, phone calls and text messages.

McAllen police began working with the Secret Service after a number of area retailers were hit with fraudulent purchases on Jan. 12. The Secret Service confirmed that the fraudulent accounts traced back to the original Target data breach from December, Rodriguez said.

Investigators fanned out to McAllen-area merchants and reviewed "miles of video" looking for the fraudsters, he said. From that, they were able to identify two people and a car with Mexican license plates.

With the help of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, investigators confirmed the identities of their suspects from immigration records of when they had entered Texas in the same vehicle, Rodriguez said. Police prepared arrest warrants last week and waited for them to return.

On Sunday morning, federal officials alerted police the two were at the Anzalduas International Bridge trying to re-enter the U.S. They were carrying 96 fraudulent cards, Rodriguez said.

Investigators believe the two were involved in both the acquisition of the fraudulent account data and the production of the cards.

Rodriguez said investigators suspect Garcia and Guardiola were singling out Sundays for their shopping sprees hoping that the banks would not be as quick to detect the fraud.

He said he expected Garcia and Guardiola to eventually face federal charges.

The Target security breach is believed to have involved 40 million credit and debit card accounts and the personal information of 70 million customers.


http://news.yahoo.com/2-nabbed-texas...215609992.html

Police Arrest Illegal Aliens With Ties To Massive Target Credit Card Breach

By Top Right News on January 21, 2014 in amnesty, Border Security, Crime, Economy, Immigration, Politics



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Police have arrested two Mexican illegal aliens on fraud charges in the first arrests tied to the December Target credit card breach — a stark reminder of the frequent involvement of illegal immigration and identity theft in the U.S.

On Sunday, Police arrested 27-year-old Mary Carmen Garcia and 28-year-old Daniel Guardiola Dominguez both from Monterrey as they tried to cross into the U.S. from Reynosa with 96 fraudulent credit credit cards in their possession, said Police Chief Victor Rodriguez. Account information stolen during the Target security breach was used to produce the credit cards.

The illegals, both from Monterrey, Mexico, used cards containing the account information of South Texas residents. The cards were used to buy tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise at national retailers in the area including Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Toys R Us, according to McAllen, TX Police.

“We received information about their activities and obtained arrest warrants for them,” Rodriguez said. “We were able to serve those warrants when they tried coming back from Mexico. During the arrest we found out that they had another stash of fraudulent credit cards on them.”

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Above: Nearly 100 fraudulent credit cards carried by Mexican illegals trying to re-enter the U.S.
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The Target security breach in December involved hackers who got into the company’s computer system and took the names, credit card information and phone numbers of 40 million accounts and the personal information of 70 million customers.

McAllen Police is expected to release more information once the couple has been formally charged before a judge.

The arrests were a stark reminder of the massive damage which has been caused to American citizens from illegal aliens. Illegals typically posses fraudulent documents such as counterfeit Social Security cards, forged drivers licenses, fake “green cards,” and phony birth certificates. Experts suggest that approximately 75 percent of working-age illegal aliens use stolen or fraudulent Social Security cards to obtain employment.

Illegal aliens commit felonies in order to get jobs. Illegal aliens who use fraudulent documents, perjure themselves on I-9 forms, and commit identity theft in order to get jobs.

http://toprightnews.com/?p=833

Feds, police differ over whether Texas border arrests linked to Target breach

Published January 21, 2014Associated Press

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  January 21, 2014: These photos provided by the McAllen, Texas police show Daniel Guardiola Dominguez, 28, and Mary Carmen Garcia, 27, both of Monterrey, Mexico.
  

MCALLEN, TEXAS – A South Texas police chief said Monday that two Mexican citizens who were arrested at the border used account information stolen during the Target security breach to buy tens of thousands of dollars' worth of merchandise. But a federal official said later there currently was no connection between the arrests and the retailer's credit card data theft.

McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez said Mary Carmen Garcia, 27, and Daniel Guardiola Dominguez, 28, both of Monterrey, Mexico, had used cards containing the account information of South Texas residents. Rodriguez said they were used to purchase numerous items at national retailers in the area including Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Toys R Us.

"They're obviously selling the data sets by region," Rodriguez said.

Late Monday, a federal official with knowledge of the case said there currently was no connection between the McAllen case and any ongoing investigation into the Target breach, but would not elaborate. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was prohibited from providing details about the investigation.

The discrepancy could not immediately be rectified late Monday.

Messages left for Rodriguez and his lieutenant Monday evening seeking a response to those comments weren't immediately returned.

Garcia and Guardiola were both being held Monday on state fraud charges. It was not immediately known whether they had retained lawyers.

Rodriguez said he did not know whether these arrests were the first related to the Target breach.

Asked about the McAllen arrests, Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder said in an email Monday that the investigation was active and ongoing.

"I'd have to refer you to local law enforcement there for any questions about their community," she said. The Minneapolis-based company said last week that it has stopped more than a dozen operations that sought to scam breach victims by way of email, phone calls and text messages.

A message left with the U.S. Secret Service seeking more information about the case was not immediately returned.

McAllen police began working with the Secret Service after a number of area retailers were hit with fraudulent purchases on Jan. 12. The Secret Service confirmed that the fraudulent accounts traced back to the original Target data breach from December, Rodriguez said.

Investigators fanned out to McAllen-area merchants and reviewed "miles of video" looking for the fraudsters, he said. From that, they were able to identify two people and a car with Mexican license plates.

With the help of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, investigators confirmed the identities of their suspects from immigration records of when they had entered Texas in the same vehicle, Rodriguez said. Police prepared arrest warrants last week and waited for them to return.

On Sunday morning, federal officials alerted police the two were at the Anzalduas International Bridge trying to re-enter the U.S. They were carrying 96 fraudulent cards, Rodriguez said.

Investigators believe the two were involved in both the acquisition of the fraudulent account data and the production of the cards.

Rodriguez said investigators suspect Garcia and Guardiola were singling out Sundays for their shopping sprees hoping that the banks would not be as quick to detect the fraud.

He said he expected Garcia and Guardiola to eventually face federal charges.

The Target security breach is believed to have involved 40 million credit and debit card accounts and the personal information of 70 million customers.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/01/21...rd-fraud-case/

A friend of mine that lives in Texas became a victim of this over the weekend. My friend lives near Dallas and the cards were used in Miami. The thieves wiped out her checking and savings accounts at the bank the card was issued through.