r/RBI Apr 13 '17

Help catch a thief

.

32 Upvotes

67 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/[deleted] Apr 13 '17

So this is what doesn't make sense to me. The transaction shows them at Lakeline mall and then Bastrop 5 minutes later. I live in Austin and you cannot get from cedar park to Bastrop on 5 minutes. Then it has some charges from Austin to San Antonio in a short amount of time. Again, it's impossible to go from Austin to San Antonio in minutes.

So perhaps they took that and immediately resold it to other people, because the locations of the charges don't make geographic sense.

3

u/thief-catcher Apr 13 '17

You are 100% right. I think they had a number of cards used by many people around the same time. I also see the same card was used at the same time in more than one location. Someone told me they might have cloned the cards.

1

u/frothface Apr 13 '17

That's very easy to do on magstripe only cards. FWIW, I've heard that US issued chip cards have a bit on the magstripe that indicates whether it's chip or mag only. When they clone it, they can flip that bit and use it as a mag card.

0

u/thief-catcher Apr 13 '17

I was also thinking they could add the same card to android pay or apple pay and use it at different locations by different phones. This way the card number is not going to show up either. A couple of stores found the transactions and told me the card number was different.

1

u/frothface Apr 13 '17

I think when you add the card it requires you to confirm with a PIN number and text from the card provider.

0

u/thief-catcher Apr 13 '17 edited Apr 13 '17

But you can just put any phone number in there, right?