This story is unbelievable. The con was so simple yet so effective. Well, effective until the guy got caught.

Each Apple Store got conned out of around $7200’s worth of kit using a closed debit card account. Surely that’s not possible but that’s what a 24-year-old fraudster is alleged to have done not once but 42 times – value of con being $309,768!

The Tampa Bay Times reports that the East Tampa resident Sharron Parrish used an absurdly simple method to persuade Apple Store staff to override payment terminals after his transactions were declined …

When a card transaction is declined by a bank, sales clerks have the option of phoning the bank to see whether they will authorize the transaction. If the bank agrees, they issue the clerk with an override code they can tap into the terminal to allow the transaction to go through.

The problem is: the system doesn’t check this code – only the number of digits. This crazily lax-sounding security shouldn’t normally matter, as the clerk should only ever override a declined transaction after speaking with the bank on the phone. But what Parrish did was to pretend to call his bank, then tell the clerk they’d okayed it and asked them to tap in the code – which Parrish simply made up.

Some Apple Store staff refused to do it, and Parrish left other stores without any goods when staff grew suspicious, but on 42 occasions the clerks did as asked and forced the transaction through.

I still cannot believe this was allowed to happen.

Source – 9to5mac.com