'Nightline' Tracks Hackers in Underground Identity Theft Chatrooms; How to Protect Yourself

By ELISABETH LEAMY

Foryears, crimes have followed the same age old mantra: wrong place at thewrong time. For someone to commit a crime against someone else, theyhad to be physically in the same area. But that's no longer the case;it's now easier than ever to be victim of a crime, particularlyidentity theft, without even realizing it.

Identitythieves snatch tens of billions dollars a year through credit cardfraud, either outright, or by selling your card information to othercrooks across the globe. The perpetrators come from a loosely organizedinternational underworld working beyond the reach of the law andwithout limits.

"They can sit in an apartment in Kiev ... andsteal your identity and you're going to be in a world of hurt," saidDan Clements, founder of Card Cops, a company that has been trackinghackers who buy and sell people's identities. "They blatantly ... tradecredit cards. They trade social security numbers. They trade debit cardpin numbers."

Card Cops has been tracking hackers' activity fora decade. Crooks from all over the world meet in Internet chat rooms,in what almost looks like an underground stock market. "Credit cardsare commodity items," Clements said. "They can go for as little as $2or $3 for a regular credit card. If you have a platinum card, it may befor $10 or $20. It's big business. They make a lot of money. There arepeople here that claim to make $20,000 to $30,000 a month selling theseresources in these chat rooms."

The chat rooms operate like acommodity floor, where information is openly traded, and the hackerswho carry out identity theft usually live in another part of theworld.  "It's a global market," Clements said. "It's like a bazaarwhere you can buy anything at any time."  The Card Cops should know:They entered the business of protecting consumers and merchants fromidentity theft because many of them were scammed themselves when theyworked together at another Internet company.

To help understandhow fast a thief can siphon money from an account, ABC Newsexperimentally opened a Visa account. It only took 15 minutes before ahacker got hungry.  "

We had a hit from a retailer inMassachusetts," said Clements. The culprit used the credit card numberto buy Dominos Pizza. "So there is your charge for $39.76. It lookslike some kid might have found the card in this chat room and decidedto buy his buddies pizzas."

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