Card data stolen in Target breach starts getting misused

The payment card information swiped in the massive Target breach has been spotted being misused in Texas, and two Mexican citizens were arrested and are facing federal charges.

According to an AP report, Mary Carmen Vaquera Garcia, 27, and Daniel Guardiola Dominguez, 28, from Monterrey, Mexico, have repeatedly entered the US and used cards cloned from the information stolen from Target to effect a great number of purchases in South Texas.

The two would carry out their fraudulent incursions on Sundays, perhaps hoping that the credit card companies and retailers would not be able to spot the theft in time and that would allow them to return to Mexico without getting caught.

The cards they used were cloned from stolen information tied to South Texas residents, in order to make the payments less suspicious.

Apparently, the first incursion was made on January 12, and targeted Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Toys R Us shops in the area. After the fraudulent nature of the transactions was discovered, the police and the US Secret Service were brought in to investigate.

After watching hours of video tapes, they identified Vaquera Garcia and Guardiola Domingues, as well as the car they used. Next Sunday, when they tried to enter the US again with the same car, the authorities spotted and arrested them. They had 96 cloned cards with them at the time of the arrest.

The two fraudsters were apparently involved in both the acquisition of the stolen data and in the physical creation of the cloned cards, but according to McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez, they could also be part of a bigger conspiracy, and are linked to Eastern Europe or Russia crooks who are “obviously selling the data sets by region.”