1.A criminal gang got ahold of a large list of stolen credit card info.
2.They use a smart phone app, or possibly Dominoe’s pizza official pizza ordering app to order a pizza to check whether individual card info is still good or already cancelled, and if it is good they then use the card to buy high ticket items online.
3.They post to facebook asking who wants pizza? And somehow they sell the pizza for a reduced price or give it away free? to the respondents who either pick it up in store or have it delivered to their address. Police did a sting and arrested these people? Or they rather stupidly gave their own address for the pizza to be delivered to, or they themselves picked it up(also stupid).
What I am missing here? The article claims there is a market for second hand pizza generated by this, but then seems to imply the guys receiving the pizza are the actual criminals. I would guess they are paying a reduced price for it should the first option be true, but how exactly are they paying the scammers? With cash?
You’re right: the article is not very well-written, in that it doesn’t clarify who is actually getting the pizza in these schemes. If the guys stealing the credit card numbers are putting up posts saying, “Who wants pizza?”, then the people receiving the pizza presumably aren’t the thieves. And yet they arrested one of those people. It’s also not clear because of how that one guy describes the way he got the pizza: “On Nov. 13, he was talking to an acquaintance on the phone. 'He said, “I’ll get Domino’s to your house,” ’ Mr. Skeete said. ‘He was saying how he had got Domino’s before and he wanted to get it for me, and I didn’t say no to Domino’s.’” What is that supposed to mean? He doesn’t say whether it’s free or not.
The pizza is not the point. The criminals have a bunch of stolen credit card numbers and security codes, some of which have no doubt already been cancelled. They need to find out which ones are still good, but they don’t want to give themselves away if they are not.
So they use them to order pizza online to someone’s house. If the card has been cancelled, they find out, but no one sees them trying to use a cancelled card. If it hasn’t, someone gets free pizza. The “anonymous pizza benefactor” aspect just means that while the target is expecting pizza and therefore won’t make a fuss, neither they nor Dominos have any information they can give to the police about who ran the card if questioned later.
Shortly after, having pared their list of credit cards down to those that are actually still valid, they start buying big-ticket, resell-able items.
I read somewhere that gas station pay-at-the-pump was the go-to thing for testing stolen card validity (and that if you are going to by a wedding ring you should not stop for gas along the way, because the CC companies will trigger a security warning because of this “gas, followed by big-ticket item” pattern). That must have fallen out of fashion.
That isn’t a market though, a market implies you’re selling something to a buyer.
I bet you are right, but then I wonder how police can justify arresting and charging the people getting free pizzas. If someone asks on facebook if I want a free pizza and I say sure and they ask for my address what crime have I committed?
It does sound like a reasonable way to separate oneself from the crime. There is really no identification of the person unless they use a traceable phone number or something - but in the day of disposable cell phones that should be easily avoidable.
I do believe in some areas it is a crime to buy or possibly receive stolen property which may justify the arrest, but it just seems more of a case where the cops did not catch on to this and arrested the innocent pizza lover.
I agree. The use of the term “secondhand market” is sloppy on the part of the article writer.
Provided you actually think you are receiving pizza from an anonymous benefactor providing it as a legitimate gift, you haven’t committed any crime. But at first blush it certainly looks like you bought pizza for yourself using a stolen credit card. Police only know about the credit card fraud and the delivery to your address, which provides reasonable suspicion, not the rest of the conversation which may exonerate you.
Most US states have laws against trafficking in stolen property. The pizza is stolen property. Generally there needs to be some understanding that it is stolen or a reasonable understanding that it’s likely stolen. Many of the criminals experienced enough to do this likely show a pattern of doing it often without any reasonable justification for being able to afford giving away so many pizzas. Probable cause in that scenario isn’t all that hard.
Ah yea they may have records showing many pizzas bought on stolen cards going to a particular address.
I imagined a scenario where in a bar or restaurant someone buys a drink and sends it to my party using a stolen card, I say thanks and they depart only to leave me there when the cops arrive(assuming the card owner sees the charge right away.)
And can I say again what a POORLY written and almost nonsensical article!
What I am missing here? The article claims there is a market for second hand pizza generated by this, but then seems to imply the guys receiving the pizza are the actual criminals. I would guess they are paying a reduced price for it should the first option be true, but how exactly are they paying the scammers? With cash?