ORLANDO, Fla. – A joint law enforcement effort led by the U.S. Secret Service Thursday dismantled 13 illegal devices, a move the agency projected would prevent $3.9 million in stolen EBT funds in Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville.
Brian Lambert, the assistant director of the U.S. Secret Service, joined the operation to observe results in real-time.
“The potential exists for over $1 billion in losses across the United States,” Lambert said. “The fraud that we are seeing today is impacting vulnerable people.”
As News 6 first reported last year, transnational thieves are targeting the EBT cards with great success because the magnetic stripes offer little security from skimmers.
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That has prompted News 6 to propose a push to develop federal legislation with the Secret Service and Washington lawmakers to improve security protocol on the EBT cards.
“We don’t want to rely only on magnetic stripes, that leaves a particular vulnerability and that’s what we are trying to address today,” Lambert said.
Fourteen teams, making up roughly 50 officers and agents, hit the streets at about 10 a.m. to inspect roughly 250 store locations in the Orlando area alone.
A total of 472 businesses were inspected in all three cities, along with 3,500 Point of Sale devices.
News 6 joined the operation that included members of the FDACS, the U.S. Border Patrol, and deputies from Orange and Seminole counties, along with the Secret Service.
The operation was designed as an outreach program to educate business owners about the transnational offensive used to infiltrate store devices.
Special Agent in Charge Caroline O’Brien Buster of the Orlando U.S. Secret Service office said families using EBT cards wake up to lost funds fleeced by transnational crime rings every month.
“These are our communities, these are our citizens,” O’Brien Buster said. “These are people we interact with on a daily basis.”
O’Brien Buster said additional sweeps will be run in the Central Florida area in the months ahead to make sure the people who need the EBT funds get them.
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