Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Associated Press
McALLEN, Texas
Account information stolen during the Target security breach is being divided up and sold off regionally, a South Texas police chief said Monday after the arrest of two Mexican citizens who authorities say arrived at the border with 96 fraudulent credit cards.
McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez said Mary Carmen Garcia, 27, and Daniel Guardiola Dominguez, 28, both of Monterrey, Mexico, used cards containing the account information of South Texas residents. Rodriguez said they were used to buy tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise at national retailers in the area including Best Buy, Walmart and Toys “R” Us.
“They’re obviously selling the data sets by region,” Rodriguez said.
Garcia and Guardiola were both being held Monday on state fraud charges. It was not immediately known whether they had retained lawyers.
Rodriguez said he did not know whether they were the first arrests related to the Target breach. Target did not immediately return phone and email messages left Monday, which was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday. The Minneapolis-based company said last week that it has stopped more than a dozen operations that sought to scam breach victims by way of email, phone calls and text messages.
McAllen police began working with the U.S. Secret Service after a number of area retailers were hit with fraudulent purchases Jan. 12.