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As federal and international law-enforcement agencies bask in praise for the indictments of 11 alleged participants in the most-successful card theft ring to date (CardLine, 8/5), other fraud rings are planning or carrying out their next data thefts, sources remind CardLine. Gartner Group LLC analyst Avivah Litan tells CardLine that U.S. law-enforcement agencies shared with her their frustration about "turf battles" in their years-long investigations of the thefts of card data from TJX Cos. Inc. and other merchants. In the end, the indictments and arrests by police across the world show "a lot of cooperation between banks, retailers and law enforcement," Litan says. "You can't catch these fellas without a lot of undercover work, infiltrating and eavesdropping. It requires a lot of patience and time." The resulting arrests and indictments were good news, agrees Chuck Cashman, product director for CUNA Mutual Group, a Madison, Wis.-based company that provides insurance, financial services and government lobbying on behalf of credit unions and financial cooperatives. "We've heard that law enforcement was involved in some of these high-profile cases behind the scenes, but we've never seen law enforcement crack the case," Cashman tells CardLine. But, he adds, criminals always will adapt their strategies to any efforts to thwart their thefts of card data, noting Visa Inc. already has sent acquirers some 248 alerts of possible data compromises this year through its Compromised Account Management System. "Fraud rings are going back to their shops to think about how to do business, and we need to go back to our shops to think of how to prevent it," Cashman says.
