eBay, Gift Card Resales, and Cyber Money Laundering

[mandy]

That gift card you spotted on the Internet offered at a nice discount look enticing? Buy it and you may be helping a cybercrook complete a slick money-laundering scheme.

In what security experts describe as "cyber money laundering" or "e-fencing," scammers have perfected yet another way to convert stolen data into cash while sitting at a computer.

How it works: Thieves use a stolen credit card number to buy a gift card online, then sell it to the highest bidder at an online auction website or for a set discount at a gift-card exchange website.

"People have found that purchasing gift cards with stolen credit card information and selling them online is very lucrative," says Joseph LaRocca, vice president of loss prevention at the National Retail Federation...

full article: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/comput...ards_N.htm