Man accused of stealing credit card numbers

It was the furtive swiping under the counter that caught the customer's attention.

Curious, the customer leaned over the counter to see the cashier swiping his debit card into a portable scanner. A similar device was hanging on the cashier's key chain.

Before his credit card number could be stolen, the customer grabbed the device and key chain and walked out of the Chinese restaurant. The devices were turned over to the sheriff's office, where they wound up on Detective Brian Mott's desk.

For Mott, it was another piece to the puzzle.

Mott already had King Wok restaurant on Powell Road targeted as the likely source of a string of stolen credit card numbers. He started an investigation July 10 after a victim noticed an unfamiliar charge on her bank account from a Tampa gift shop.

In all the cases, the customer had made a purchase at King Wok restaurant before the alleged fraud began. They described the cashier as a man who went by "Peter," according to an arrest report.

Then on July 17, a customer purchasing food noticed this cashier swiping his card under the counter with a strange device. He believed it was a "skimmer" or a "reader" to steal credit card numbers and took them from the cashier, a report states.

The cashier known as "Peter" quit his job the night his devices were stolen. After some more detective work, Mott identified the cashier as Wu Zhang, 40, a man with a criminal history of fraudulent activity.

Zhang was tracked down in Tampa and arrested July 31 on a charge of using a scanning device to defraud. He is being held without bond because he has no local addresses, uses multiple aliases (he was hired at the restaurant under a false name) and because of his criminal background, a report states.

It's unclear exactly how many people have been victimized. When detectives sent out an alert to banks and other agencies, Bank of America said 14 customers traced fraudulent charges to King Wok restaurant, a report shows.

The devices were sent to the U.S. Secret Service for decoding. A search warrant inventory form shows they returned 39 pages of information.

The sheriff's office said Thursday that the case was still under investigation. A message left Thursday for the manager of King Wok restaurant was not returned.

Credit card skimming has become much more common and lucrative in the past five years, said Robert Siciliano, a security expert and consultant to Intelius, an identity theft prevention company.

Devices like the ones detectives say Zhang used can be purchased with relative ease online. The skimmer captures magnetic data with a strip and can be downloaded later at the user's convenience. Some devices can hold up to 3,000 numbers.

The numbers are then used to make online purchases or burned onto a blank debit card. Typically, a user will withdraw the maximum amount every 24 hours until the account is empty or closed.

Skimmers can cost up to $5,000, but the ill-gotten rewards outweigh the start-up costs. Law enforcement in New York City recently reported that a gang had stolen $500,000 from bank accounts with an ATM skimmer.

Another popular location to install skimmers is at gas pumps.

Siciliano suggests checking bank statements as frequently as possible, but every two weeks at a minimum. Debit card users typically have about two to three days to report fraudulent activity before they are held responsible for the charges. Credit card holders have about 60 days. In either case, expect fees of $50-500.