Merchant911 - Fraud Prevention for Merchants

The history

A few years ago, there were stories circulating around the Internet about hotel key cards that contained a lot of personal information including your name, your address, and your credit card number. But then a quick trip to Snopes would tell us that the stories were totally false. They even went so far as to say that the Police Detective that issued the initial information had issued a retraction. All well and good. I believed that; there was no reason for a hotel to save the information on the card.

The problem

A recent story released by the Washington Post has dredged up the story again. Now we’re hearing that prostitutes and addicts in Vegas (Vegas has junkies?) are being arrested with hotel key cards in their possession. And these key cards DO have credit card information on them. All of it. It seems that the bad guys are passing legitimate cards through hand-held scanners and cloning the information onto the mag strip on key cards. After all, a magnetic stripe can be erased and re-written. These are then used by the bad guys on the street to cash out at ATMs and small purchases. If they get arrested, what’s so unusual about a hooker with a couple of hotel keys?

The answer?

Sounds to me like a no-brainer. Even in Las Vegas we wouldn’t expect anyone, even a prostitute, to have more than one key card. After all, when we check out, we’re supposed to leave them behind. So law enforcement needs to be more vigilant when doing a post-arrest inventory. Those cards need to be checked to see if they have hotel data or credit card data. It looks like, at least in Vegas, the PD is aware.