I’ve seen a lot of credit card theft in network breach cases, but theft of reward points to book free stays and gift certificates is a new one to me.
On numerous occasions between August 2017 and July 2020, Patel hacked into the Phoenix-based computers of an international hospitality company. Patel fraudulently transferred and redeemed customer reward points from the company’s customer loyalty program. He also stole credit card numbers and other personally identifying information (PII) from customers and loyalty program members, which were stored in the company’s computers. Patel took screenshots of customers’ and members’ information, which included credit card numbers and other PII, and saved the screenshots to a Google Drive he controlled. In total, between August 2017 and July 2020, Patel stole and possessed more than 1,200 credit card numbers. Patel used some of the stolen credit card numbers to make unauthorized purchases and also tried to sell some of the stolen credit card numbers.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-az/pr/hacker-sentenced-51-months-prison-stealing-customer-credit-card-numbers
What I found interesting was that Patel committed this crime while he was facing charges for an unrelated one!
Officials said Patel started the hacking scheme while he was in custody for unrelated charges and continued after his release. Prosecutors believe Patel was partly motivated to start hacking out of fear and desperation.
https://www.12news.com/article/news/crime/hacker-sentenced-stealing-hundreds-credit-card-numbers-arizona/75-81cac896-cb60-4923-83eb-d9af670475bd
Sources:
- https://www.justice.gov/usao-az/pr/hacker-sentenced-51-months-prison-stealing-customer-credit-card-numbers
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63158296/united-states-v-patel/
- https://www.12news.com/article/news/crime/hacker-sentenced-stealing-hundreds-credit-card-numbers-arizona/75-81cac896-cb60-4923-83eb-d9af670475bd
Transcript:
00:00:00:00 – 00:00:33:05
Keith
I’ve seen a lot of credit card theft in network breach cases, but this is the first time I’ve seen fraudulent use of hotel reward points in order to get free stays and gift certificates as well to a breach. Chirag Patel gets 51 months for stolen credit cards and rewards points fraud today on eCrimeBytes Nibble number 45. So the crime itself happened between August of 2017 and July of 2020.
00:00:33:07 – 00:01:09:03
Keith
Patel hacked into a Phoenix based international hospitality company, which I just read that as a hotel company he fraudulently transferred and redeemed a bunch of customer reward points from the company’s reward loyalty program. He also stole credit card numbers and other personally identifiable information, or PII, from customers and loyalty program members which were stored in the company’s computers that he broke into.
00:01:09:05 – 00:01:39:16
Keith
Patel took screenshots of the customer and members information. So he had a bunch of images of just PII, of just tons and tons of people. He saved these screenshots to a Google drive that he controlled, so that was where he stored his loot. In total, between August 2017 and July 2020, Patel stole and possessed more than 1200 credit card numbers.
00:01:39:19 – 00:02:08:12
Keith
He used some of the stolen credit card numbers to make unauthorized purchases, and he also tried to sell some of the stolen credit card numbers to other people. Now, what I thought was particularly interesting about this case is, okay, he stole credit card numbers. Okay. He’s out there, you know, stealing these reward points. He did it while he was facing charges for an unrelated crime.
00:02:08:12 – 00:02:33:10
Keith
Yeah. So if that isn’t strange enough, he was actually out on another crime and he then started this whole hacking scheme out of desperation, apparently, to make money or something that just says hacking out of fear and desperation. So yeah, I thought that was pretty interesting.
00:02:33:13 – 00:03:04:08
Keith
So if you enjoyed this quick eCrimeBytes nibble that I release a couple times a week, you will probably enjoy our, I shouldn’t even say probably you’re really going to enjoy our longer episodes because my co-host Seth and I, we take a case like this and we go much deeper into it and we talk about the criminals, the victims, the crime, what happens in court and how they’re punished. So again, if you enjoyed this quick e crime bites nibble, I really hope you’ll join us on one of our full episodes soon.
00:03:04:11 – 00:03:07:16
Keith
Alrighty, thanks. Bye.
#ecrimebytes #electronic #truecrime #podcast #humor #funny #comedy #pii #fraud
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