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The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has released surveillance photos of two suspects making cash withdrawals from ATMs in the Chicago area using cards believed to have been cloned from payroll debit card data compromised in the breach of processor RBS WorldPay last year. The two suspects were among six to eight in the Chicago area acting as low-level "cashiers" in a worldwide scheme to draw millions of dollars from ATMs around the world during a 10-hour period that began 8 Nov. "In order to recruit the number of people involved in this attack requires a great deal of planning and coordination," Ross Rice, FBI special agent and spokesperson for the bureau's Chicago office, tells CardLine Global. RBS WorldPay, formerly RBS Lynk, is the United States-based payment-processing arm of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group. RBS announced in December that an unauthorized party had improperly accessed the company's computer system (CardLine Global, 30 Dec. 2008). Compromised prepaid cards included 1.5 million payroll and open-loop gift cards, approximately 100 of which had experienced actual fraud, according to an RBS statement. The bank says hackers also may have accessed the Social Security numbers of approximately 1.1 million individuals. Surveillance photos show the two Chicago suspects making withdrawals from ATMs at a bank branch in Matteson, a suburb south of Chicago, and at a Walgreens store in nearby Calumet City. An RBS WorldPay spokesperson says no identity theft has been reported on individuals whose personal information was compromised in the breach. Neither the RBS spokesperson nor Ross would confirm media estimates of the amount of fraud committed on the payroll cards.
