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Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Pizza Orders Reveal Credit Card Scheme, and a Secondhand Market
DEC. 5, 2014
Photo
Stolen credit card numbers were used to order Domino’s Pizza in Brooklyn to see which cards were still active and could be used for bigger purchases. CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times
Crime Scene
By MICHAEL WILSON
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The seemingly harmless question raised suspicions among police officers in Brooklyn when they saw the query posed repeatedly on Facebook, by users whose profiles they were keeping an eye on because of suspected gang ties. The pizza question was sometimes accompanied by the red-and-blue Domino’s logo.
Officers contacted Domino’s, and a bigger story came into focus, a curious blend of high-tech fraud and street-level word of mouth. With pepperoni and extra cheese.
“They started seeing a record spike in sales,” said Deputy Chief Kevin P. Harrington, the commanding officer of the grand larceny division.
In short, thieves working through lists of stolen credit card numbers were using a smartphone app that orders pizza to see which numbers still worked. When they found a number to be valid, authorities said, the thieves used it to order bigger-ticket items online — while people in pockets of Brownsville and East New York in Brooklyn ate the pizzas.
Some warm, some cold. But all hot.
The scheme was “not to get free Domino’s,” Deputy Inspector Joseph Gulotta said, “but free Domino’s was the bottom line.”
One of the many kinds of identity theft is the black-market sale of stolen credit card numbers. No card is necessary: just the number and the three-digit security code that goes with it. A thief buys a list of those numbers. The next step is to see which ones have not been canceled.
In Brooklyn, news spread of a way of doing this, according to Inspector Gulotta, a former commanding officer of a precinct in Brownsville.
“Word of mouth, social media,” he said. “It flies.”
Several people with no apparent connection to one another were using a Domino’s smartphone app to order pizzas — lots of pizzas, up to $50 per order — in order after order, Inspector Gulotta said. The app allows the user to enter an address and a credit-card number, and presto, a short time later, along comes the pizza delivery.
Investigators, working with a Domino’s loss-prevention office, were able to determine which recent orders had been paid for with stolen credit card numbers. Days or weeks later, the rightful owners of the cards — “from all over the country,” Inspector Gulotta said — noticed that they had seemed to have bought a lot of pizza in Brooklyn, and contested the charges. Domino’s was left to pay the credit cards back for its own pies.
The police investigated the smartphones used in the pizza sales and found evidence of the scheme: a pattern of many unsuccessful credit card purchases — denied because the cards had been canceled — followed by a successful buy.
“This account has tried 50 attempts,” Inspector Gulotta said of one phone. “Two thousand attempts in the last month.”
Chief Harrington said it was believed that some of the pizzas were sold on the street. “There is a secondary market for pizza,” he said.
The officers were able to identify the phones that placed the orders, and in a two-day sweep that began on Nov. 13, they arrested 14 people and charged them with petty larceny or identity theft or both. The suspects were male, with one exception, and predominantly from Brooklyn. The median age was 18.
One of those arrested was Armani Skeete, a 17-year-old high school senior from Brownsville.
“I didn’t order the pizza,” he said in an interview this week. “Someone ordered the pizza for me. The address was at my house.”
He was posed a rhetorical question: Doesn’t he hate it when that happens?
“I didn’t do anything,” he said.
On Nov. 13, he was talking to an acquaintance on the phone. “He said, ‘I’ll get Domino’s to your house,’ ” Mr. Skeete said. “He was saying how he had got Domino’s before and he wanted to get it for me, and I didn’t say no to Domino’s.”
The buzzer rang, and he went downstairs for the pizza. “It was a Domino’s driver, and he asked me, ‘Is this your pizza?’ Next thing I know I got put in handcuffs and put in the police precinct.” He never so much as caught a whiff of the pizza.
He was peppered with questions. “You ordered Domino’s, you did whatever,” he recalls being told. Mr. Skeete said he knew nothing of credit card schemes.
The precinct house filled with other young men, he said. “What are you in here for?” one of them asked him.
“I got arrested for picking up a box of pizza from Domino’s.”
The stranger replied, “Oh, you too?” Mr. Skeete was later given a desk appearance ticket and released.
Calls to several Domino’s chains in the neighborhood found no one aware of the scheme, which makes sense, because it all happened on the app. All callers are greeted with a recording urging customers to order anywhere, anytime with the pizza app, adding, “Life just got a little easier.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/n...73522000&smtyp=aut&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id
DEC. 5, 2014
Photo
Stolen credit card numbers were used to order Domino’s Pizza in Brooklyn to see which cards were still active and could be used for bigger purchases. CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times
Crime Scene
By MICHAEL WILSON
Continue reading the main storyShare This Page
- Save
The seemingly harmless question raised suspicions among police officers in Brooklyn when they saw the query posed repeatedly on Facebook, by users whose profiles they were keeping an eye on because of suspected gang ties. The pizza question was sometimes accompanied by the red-and-blue Domino’s logo.
Officers contacted Domino’s, and a bigger story came into focus, a curious blend of high-tech fraud and street-level word of mouth. With pepperoni and extra cheese.
“They started seeing a record spike in sales,” said Deputy Chief Kevin P. Harrington, the commanding officer of the grand larceny division.
In short, thieves working through lists of stolen credit card numbers were using a smartphone app that orders pizza to see which numbers still worked. When they found a number to be valid, authorities said, the thieves used it to order bigger-ticket items online — while people in pockets of Brownsville and East New York in Brooklyn ate the pizzas.
Some warm, some cold. But all hot.
The scheme was “not to get free Domino’s,” Deputy Inspector Joseph Gulotta said, “but free Domino’s was the bottom line.”
One of the many kinds of identity theft is the black-market sale of stolen credit card numbers. No card is necessary: just the number and the three-digit security code that goes with it. A thief buys a list of those numbers. The next step is to see which ones have not been canceled.
In Brooklyn, news spread of a way of doing this, according to Inspector Gulotta, a former commanding officer of a precinct in Brownsville.
“Word of mouth, social media,” he said. “It flies.”
Several people with no apparent connection to one another were using a Domino’s smartphone app to order pizzas — lots of pizzas, up to $50 per order — in order after order, Inspector Gulotta said. The app allows the user to enter an address and a credit-card number, and presto, a short time later, along comes the pizza delivery.
Investigators, working with a Domino’s loss-prevention office, were able to determine which recent orders had been paid for with stolen credit card numbers. Days or weeks later, the rightful owners of the cards — “from all over the country,” Inspector Gulotta said — noticed that they had seemed to have bought a lot of pizza in Brooklyn, and contested the charges. Domino’s was left to pay the credit cards back for its own pies.
The police investigated the smartphones used in the pizza sales and found evidence of the scheme: a pattern of many unsuccessful credit card purchases — denied because the cards had been canceled — followed by a successful buy.
“This account has tried 50 attempts,” Inspector Gulotta said of one phone. “Two thousand attempts in the last month.”
Chief Harrington said it was believed that some of the pizzas were sold on the street. “There is a secondary market for pizza,” he said.
The officers were able to identify the phones that placed the orders, and in a two-day sweep that began on Nov. 13, they arrested 14 people and charged them with petty larceny or identity theft or both. The suspects were male, with one exception, and predominantly from Brooklyn. The median age was 18.
One of those arrested was Armani Skeete, a 17-year-old high school senior from Brownsville.
“I didn’t order the pizza,” he said in an interview this week. “Someone ordered the pizza for me. The address was at my house.”
He was posed a rhetorical question: Doesn’t he hate it when that happens?
“I didn’t do anything,” he said.
On Nov. 13, he was talking to an acquaintance on the phone. “He said, ‘I’ll get Domino’s to your house,’ ” Mr. Skeete said. “He was saying how he had got Domino’s before and he wanted to get it for me, and I didn’t say no to Domino’s.”
The buzzer rang, and he went downstairs for the pizza. “It was a Domino’s driver, and he asked me, ‘Is this your pizza?’ Next thing I know I got put in handcuffs and put in the police precinct.” He never so much as caught a whiff of the pizza.
He was peppered with questions. “You ordered Domino’s, you did whatever,” he recalls being told. Mr. Skeete said he knew nothing of credit card schemes.
The precinct house filled with other young men, he said. “What are you in here for?” one of them asked him.
“I got arrested for picking up a box of pizza from Domino’s.”
The stranger replied, “Oh, you too?” Mr. Skeete was later given a desk appearance ticket and released.
Calls to several Domino’s chains in the neighborhood found no one aware of the scheme, which makes sense, because it all happened on the app. All callers are greeted with a recording urging customers to order anywhere, anytime with the pizza app, adding, “Life just got a little easier.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/n...73522000&smtyp=aut&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id
... pizzagate is real.....
