KirkWalker

I would like to warn the good people on here about a credit card cloning scam by the staff at Alamo/National, Las Vegas Mcarran Airport.

I had a recent trip to LAS (from the UK where I am from) and used this company for my rental car, I checked in online and presented the credit card I used to the person at the exit booth. five days later my card was used at a Wal-mart in west virginia for over $500. I did not use this card at any other retail, hotel or gas station in the USA as we either pay cash or use my wifes cash back card

I contacted Alamo and after there so-called investigation they have accused me of making up the story as there staff are all angels.

The problem is the card is taken out of sight by the booth staff, and as we are usually at that point adjusting the seat, mirrors fiddling with switches and trying to get hair nation on the radio we dont see what is happening with our card, plenty of time for the staff member to swipe it through there own reader or make a imprint to sell to there criminal freinds.

So just to say Alamo/National are a bunch of crooks who protect there own and are common criminal scum. Avoid!

fyaric

WOW did you speak to the corporate office or location manager?

They should have cameras in the booth so.....
But it's more likely that if it was someone there, the easiest way would be to look at you file and that should have all your info, as i assume you are an alamo insider.

Did you tell the CC Company that may help them as i assume they try to investigate these things!

Hope this never happens again to you & all of us!! i know it can be a real pain!

there is a company rep on this forum so she might contact you her FT User name is: NationalCares

On a happy note Welcome to FT

atxtraveler

Hard hitting first post. I´ll wait to see if anyone else had this happen before i boycott

KirkWalker

It was the credit card company that contacted me to alert me of the card being used and to ask if it was me who was using the card, as I was in Vegas and the card was being used in west virginia it sure was not me.

The local office guy at Alamo was the one who was questioning the truth about my aligations. basicly suggesting I had used the card somewhere else and it was them, but the card was never out of my wallet on the trip apart from at Alamo/National.

I do not expect people to boycott Alamo/national but just to be aware of your card going out of sight at the booth. to have your account cleaned out by crooks is not nice.

Its a shame as I have used this company for over 10 years on frequent trips to the USA and to be talked to like I am the one in the wrong was very upsetting.

My wife and I love the USA and the kind people we have met over the years and have booked a trip around California next year, Rental car company has yet to be decided.

kwflyer

This actually happened to me in FLL last Feb!

I had rented a car for the day with my mastercard (I only used that specific one at National in the US) and low and behold I get a call from my credit card company (the week after) asking if I had just made 1K+ purchases at Walmart in Lexington, KY, while I'm sitting in Toronto.

They did an investigation when I told them I had used it at National but wouldn't give me specific findings on what they found, other than my account manager telling me to not use the new mastercard at National again.

Thought my case was an isolated incident? Guess not.

This really needs to be looked into.

pragakhan

Quick question, you didn't use your card here for *anything*? Not even an ATM?

From what I recall they can take a picture, buy look alike prepaid cards, glue your numbers on them and run a magnet over the mag strip which requires them to manually type in the numbers, which are your numbers they glued on.

Or, with an ATM skimmer, they can program the mag strip (??) and do the same magic with the numbers...

justhere

I've rented from National at LAS many times and never had an issue. Did you not use your card in the UK prior to coming to the US? Could someone in the UK have skimmed your number?

Not saying that it didn't happen at LAS but curious to know if there are any other possibilities.

KirkWalker

Of course my card was used in the UK prior to our trip but security in the uk is much higher than the US system, we have chip and pin in our cards so the has to know the pin number for the card, impossible to get by cloning as its in the microchip embedded in the card, also in the uk the shop does not handle the card whatsoever, the customer puts the card into a hand held terminal and keys in the pin.

We did not use a ATM as UK banks charge us for withdrawing cash abroad, so we bring enough cash for our trip.

It seems also that the crooks store of choice is Wal-mart

justhere

They would have to know the pin to use the card as chip and pin. As it's not used that way in the US it wouldn't be a stretch for someone in the UK to get the number and sell it.

Have you used it to buy anything online?

Again I'm not saying you are wrong just that there are other possibilities. And if it was at National I wouldn't say that national cloned your card. An unscrupulous employee may have done it but that could happen at any business. As your credit card company caught the issue and it made you whole Walmart is now the victim. You are very unlikely to find out if it was the National employee and what if anything happened to them.

KirkWalker

I know its not National as a company, like you say a crooked employee.
As a note I got the car at 5am so the whole lot was very quiet.

I dont use this card online as we have a cash back card for purchases.

Also in the UK the card is not allowed to be out of sight of the customer, (this type of crime was widespred in the UK with card details being sold to criminals in Pakistan and India,) so there is no chance of a copy being swiped. the problem is when the card is out of sight in the booth, it could be a night shift bonus!

I have been in contact with National/Alamo but I have just been fobbed off as if I were dirt on there shoes.

Its a shame that one employee selling card details to people with blank cards can get away with this. I do not want National to compensate me as I have no finacial loss, just inconvenience.

I have had several messages from other members having the same problem so it seems to be more widespred than LAS.

kwflyer

Sorry guys, but there is a trend here.

I thought my case was a one off issue when I used my Credit Card at National's FLL location and got compromised (the credit card swiped was only swiped at National and nowhere else) so process of elimination points back to National.

Of course they (National) rebuffed this, but I think they should be paying a lot more attention to this given this can affect their brand as a whole quite quickly.

Speaking with their fraud department (my bank) credit card skimming tends to happen:

1. When your credit card is swiped outside your line of sight (Rental car booths)

2. During off peak business hours (both which happened to the OP and myself). Psychologically the scammer feels more secure since less people watching/around.

3. The new cloned card is used at a store that the original user has either been to or is very commonplace (Walmart). Often times they will try it on a small purchase (like a chocolate bar) if that goes through. They will try again, very soon afterwards for a large purchase, and is usually what triggers the fraud alert. The scammers know this hence why they try to use it for big purchases quite quickly (and not small ones over a period of time) as the card number is soon cancelled.

It is still a pain in the a** for the customer to have to switch everything over to a new card, freeze your credit history and be vigilante for the next 6 months of any credit reporting issues (I ended up having to pay for a credit monitioring service)

4. Cloned card is used a large distance away from where it was skimmed. To make investigation that much more difficult. In our cases, West Virgina, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

5. The person swiping your card doesn't even have to be be in on it to happen. It is very easy to attach skimmers to the reader and they can read it via bluetooth. All the more reasons that manager needs to be checking daily for skimmers or unauthorized attachments to their credit card readers on a DAILY basis.

This is also a big problem at gas stations. If you ever swipe your card at the pump, there very well could be a skimmer inside the pump transmitting your info via bluetooth (yes it's going that sophisticated) up to half a km (500 metres away). All one needs is a pump key (which can be bought through the black market, or by bribing someone who works at a gas station, or ) as any pump key will pretty much open ANY pump machine in North America (unless the owner decides to cough up the expense and get their own).

That's right one pump key can open the vast majority of gas pumps (where a skimmer can be placed) and no one would know until X amount of complaints of credit fraud (which is hard to trace back so the benefit of the doubt allows it to continue) or the pump is opened for maintenance. The reason the key was made universal for all gas pumps was for ease of maintenance across different brands but no one ever thought someone would try to install skimmers in there.

This is a big issue that most gas companies don't want to talk about (again the Ostrich defence). When it happened to my friend, I immediately stopped paying at the pump and now just walk inside.

6. I know of this happening to another National Renter (Exec Elite) who has had their credit card compromised at National and was also rebuffed by the company, but is not on FT.

One incident is an isolated issue, two is a line, and (three or more) is a trend.

GeorgeJ

I've never had the person at the exit booth ask me for my credit card at any rental location....I'd probably say no if they did...driver's license, yes, which is still crap since they saw it inside already...

jackal

If the OP opts for National again, it may be wise for the OP to sign up for Emerald Club so the need for an employee to handle the credit card is removed. The number is stored in a secure manner in National's reservation system and used automatically by the system, and no employee ever sees more than the last four digits on his or her screen.

ralfp

Recently National has been adding the following text to my reservation confirmation pages:

I hate it when companies lie like this. It's for their [fiscal] safety and security, not mine. The quoted text is only true if the recipient is the cardholder and the renter is a [very stupid] fraudulent user of the cardholder's CC.

dtremit

Indeed. Hard to overemphasize the sophistication of some of these thieves. As kwflyer points out, skimming the cards is relatively easy -- but the skimmed cards are rarely used by those who skim them. Instead, the stolen numbers are sold online to others who clone and use the cards.

And I can personally testify to that trade being international. I was contacted a year or so ago by American Express after my card was used to top up a SIM card by someone in London. The card in question had never been to the UK, so it must have been stolen here, and transferred elsewhere.

Chip+Pin cards require PINs to be entered when used in the UK, but they can be used without the PIN in the US. Nothing's standing in the way of someone installing a skimmer for the magnetic stripe data in the UK, then selling that data to someone in the US.