We were able to contact 28 people whose credit cards were used to place orders on our Web site. They all told us they had never ordered any electronics there and did not recognize the names associated with the shipping addresses.
The victims we reached hail from 12 states. They live in places as different as Staten Island, N.Y., and Beverly Hills, Calif. They are from small, Midwestern towns and huge, sprawling metropolises. Dallas, Texas was the most common billing address. Here is a sampling of where other victims live: Dumas, Ark., Barstow, Calif., Miami, Fla., Peru, Ill., Edina, Minn., Norwood, Mass., Potomac, Md., Carson City, Nev., Manassas, Va., and North Augusta, S.C."; dtl_cardcops_070327[i++] = new Array("","What they said","","","","", "", "", "", "", "left", "Axel Schmidt", "AFP - Getty Images", "110", "148", "", "", "", "", ""); dtl_cardcops_070327[i-1].body = "All of the people we contacted told us they had never lost their credit cards or had them physically stolen. One victim we spoke to from Norwood, Mass., says he has been a police officer for ten years and takes many precautions.
Like others, he says that the card number used at our online store was one he had saved exclusively for online use. He was careful only to use it on secure Web sites, but says sometimes that was not possible. He says he is not sure how thieves got a hold of his credit card number, but notes he recently received several “phishing” scam e-mails.
Many of the people whose cards were used on our site told us they noticed other fraudulent activity on those cards at around the same time as the orders. For others, we were the bearers of bad news. In a few cases, people were so wary, they hung up.
";
dtl_cardcops_070327[i++] = new Array("","Online trails","","","","", "", "", "", "", "left", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "");
dtl_cardcops_070327[i-1].body = "Internet Protocol (IP) addresses tell you where a computer server is located. In more than 90 percent of our orders, the IP addresses were located outside the US. Research shows they are based in Korea, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Israel, France, and Turkey. But the overwhelming majority trace back to West Africa.
The biggest number of orders sent from a single IP address was for Wendy Kenson. Orders placed in her name traced to a few different IP addresses in West Africa, even though she said she was living in Australia – and her purchases were being sent to Penn Yan, N.Y.
One of the orders for Wendy Kenson was billed to Robert Schwartz, of Jacksonville, Fla. The IP address for that order traces back to Nigeria, and apparently has been linked to past e-mail scams, according to a German anti-spam Web site.
Another of Wendy’s orders was billed to Phyllis of East Rockaway, N.Y. The IP address for that order, also Nigerian in origin, apparently is linked to a similar scam."; // END editorial data