BY DAN HILDEBRAN
General manager
STARKE—Bradford County Sheriff Gordon Smith talked to the Keystone Heights Rotary Club about fraud prevention, and he told the civic group that when it comes to white-collar crime, he can speak from experience.
“I have fallen victim,” he said. “I have changed my debit card three times because of fraud.”
The sheriff said consumers must remain vigilant, even when on a night out.
“That pretty little waitress that comes by my table and gets your card, and she goes back there to pay for your meal,” he said. “They go click, click, and before you’ve left the restaurant, they’ve ordered an Amazon package to be delivered to the vacant apartment next to them.”
The sheriff said that recently, his agency has handled several credit card frauds committed by fast food restaurant employees working the drive-through window.
Smith said one overriding rule applies when attempting to prevent online fraud.
“Never, never,” he said, “and I’m going to say this again, and I can’t stress it enough: never use a debit card for online purchasing.”
“The good thing with a credit card is you can dispute the transactions, and they’re not emptying your bank account,” he added. “They don’t have direct access to your bank account.”
The sheriff said he recently received a call from a bank security official asking him if he was in Mexico.
“I said, no, no, I’m not in Mexico,” adding that someone had obtained the information off his Apple credit card and was making purchases south of the border.
“I had a credit card, which is the Apple card that I use, and they froze it, and of course, it takes about 10 days to get it all straightened out,” he said.
Smith also recommended using a single credit card for better tracking and security.
“Find one major credit card and use that card,” he said. Don’t use four or five credit cards and your department store card because guess what you’re doing? You’re missing something. If you use that one card all the time, then you can check it pretty easily.”
He added that consumers should check the activity on their cards frequently.
“I check mine every couple of days,” he said.
The sheriff emphasized the need to verify the legitimacy of online sellers and the need to be wary of deals that seem too good to be true.
“We dealt with a guy at the Department of Corrections,” Smith recalled. “Stopped him. We ran the car, and it came back stolen. He has his bill of sale. He found this nice ride on Facebook Marketplace. He went there and gave the guy cash, which the car was worth probably in the neighborhood of nearly $40,000, and he was able to get it for $17,000.”
“I can tell you a local person right here in Keystone,” the sheriff said, recalling another case. “Bought both his kids a new car and himself a new car. One of them had to have work done on it. We found out all three were stolen. He was out nearly $80,000.”
Smith said that with the assistance of federal agents, his investigators located the fraudster in Pennsylvania.
“This guy was selling online,” he said. “If it’s too good to be true, it is.”
Smith also said the proliferation of data brokers and the selling of personal information is a security threat to residents.
“When I run an election campaign, I use a device or a source that tells me everything about you,” he said. “What magazines do you order? You may be a registered Democrat, but you’re a subscriber to the NRA magazine. I’m probably going to target you. It would scare you if I pulled it up right now to see what people that are running for office have access to.”
Smith also advised against getting lazy with passwords.
“Interesting fact,” he said. “The word ‘password’ and ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6’ are the two most common passwords in the world.”
Smith also said security-conscious people use iPhones rather than Androids.
“If you have a droid phone, we hack those every day,” he said. “It is not easy to get into an iPhone. It’s one of the hardest, and they don’t cooperate with you. They believe in your privacy.”
“We love to catch a bad guy, and he’s got a droid phone because a lot of them use burners and throwaways and don’t want to keep the same number,” he added. “Droids are so simplistic because there’s no proprietary to it.”
Smith also discussed phishing scams and the importance of updating security software regularly.
