Barbara Riblet of Bank of America (Fraud Investigations) was introduced. She spoke about her 20 years experience in counterfeit credit card skimming. It is important to know that there is no way to avoid credit card fraud, regardless of how vigilant/guarded you try to be in using credit cards.

Skimming is the illegal act that enables criminals to obtain credit card account information to produce counterfeit cards.

New software programs 'Credit Wizard' and 'Credit Master' unfortunately provide the thief with far too much useful information. An inexpensive hand held tool (easily bought on the internet) called a 'skimming wedge' is used to steal magnetic (data) information and PIN number information from the magnetic stripe and is exactly duplicated by the thief - - to make a new (counterfeit) credit card to make fraudulent purchases.

The new VISA Bank of America cards now use a 'Flying V', hologram design (brand mark) on the front of the card. The back of the card design changes on a continuing basis.

New security features which were developed by the banks: 1) Hologram of a three-dimensional dove; 2) Magnetic Stripe are now able to be copied by the thief to create a new counterfeit credit card.

Gasoline stations, including Union 76; Phillip 66/Conoco; Chevron; and Shell Oil, have been experiencing substantial skimming activity. NOTE: The outside island pumps see more frequent fraud use - - so you are highly encouraged to use the inside island gas pumps.

Additionally, in order to reduce your chance of having frequent use of your credit card transaction used in a fraudulent manner, purchase a gasoline gift card (at the cash register) and load it up for several gasoline transactions.

As you might guess, Los Angeles is the 'fraud capital' of the world. California has the most credit card fraudulent use of any other state, followed by Florida, Texas, and New York.

Unfortunately as well, many 'chat rooms'/blogs are used to sell credit card information to the waiting thief. As you are no doubt aware, the big three credit inquiry companies are:.

			Transunion
			Equifax
			Experian

Wilfred Cochico asked if any agency had developed a bid document for citation processing/services.

Nancy Pickard noted that she is quite busy with end of the fiscal year purchases.

Felice Fromm also noted significant volume of purchasing activity related to the end of the fiscal year spending. Additionally, she is working with a 'Cronos' timekeeper system, which interfaces the timesheet function with payroll processing.

Cathy Wagner noted that she was glad to be joining our group meetings.

Bill Gellman spoke of the many meetings held by his City (21st Century Collaborative Decision Making Process) to deal with ways to reduce expenditures (in light of our economic slowdown), in addition to ways (brainstorming of new ideas) to improve revenue production.

There will not be a LAMPPAC meeting for the month of July, '08.

The next meeting is scheduled for August 6, 2008, at 2:00 p.m. The guest speaker will be Mark Zuckerman of Zuckerman Pure Water Group, to talk to us about creating water purification and safe drinking water solutions for our agencies.

Hope to see you all there.

Reporting:

Bill Gellman
Secretary