About the Founder and Director

Tom Mahoney of Lititz, Pennsylvania is the Founder and Director of Merchant 911. Mahoney started the 'organization' in January of 2001 in response to being a victim of credit card fraud in his own on-line business.

After doing some investigating, he discovered that there were major holes in the processing systems because merchants weren't being given the information they needed. He decided to combine his seven years as a police officer and investigator and almost 20 years as a computer network manager to help other merchants avoid the scams that victimized him.

Mahoney's on line business, run by his wife of over 25 years, has grown to five e-Commerce sites as well as a brick and mortar store.

Mahoney has had numerous articles published by Search Hound, Merchant Fraud Squad, and numerous trade e-zines and wrote a feature article for the White-Collar Crime Fighter journal.   After the 40 million card hack in 2005, he appeared on CBS Evening News and National Public Radio. 

Merchant 911 has been written up in Wall Street Journal and extensively in a ComputerWorld article on fraud.

About the Merchant 911 Site

Merchant 911's members include fraud prevention executives from PayPal, Visa, Apple Computer, JC Penney, and Nordstrum along with processors, acquirers, and issuers like Chase Bank, BankCard USA, and dozens of others.

Merchant 911 has helped close down several major carder sites. Some have resurfaced off-shore, others have disappeared, hopefully forever. 

Applicants for membership are carefully screened to insure that only e-Commerce merchants and related industry leaders are admitted. Members of law enforcement and cyber-law are also cleared for membership.

The Merchant911 Web site has also been selected for inclusion in "E-commerce: Business, Technology and Society," third edition, by Landon and Traver (Pearson Education - Addison Wesley).

Merchant 911 is one of the top three sites of its kind on the Internet and the largest of the free sites with over 3800 members.

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