Willoughby Hills Police said a resident came to them for help after finding out someone used their bank information to buy gift cards at a Target in Strongsville.
Police shared a surveillance picture of a man, via their Facebook page, seen walking out of the store last week. Police said they made an arrest in the case, but more specific information was not immediately available.
Police said the suspect was able to steal card info through a technique called credit card cloning where thieves use skimming devices to copy cardholder names, numbers and expiration dates right of the magnetic strip.
Kerstyn Clover, a security consultant with Cleveland-area based fraud protection firm Secure State, said that strip is easy to copy, but new credit and debit cards are required to have an encrypted chip that's harder for thieves to crack.
"Literally all they have to do is find a way to come between you and that terminal," Clover said, "So that's everything from installing a skimmer on a terminal, anywhere where you're inserting your card yourself, or if you think about it, every time you go to a restaurant -- a nice place to eat -- you hand your card off to your server and they disappear off into the back of the restaurant with it."
On October 1, the liability for fraud due to the use of a magnetic strip shifts from banks to retailers. It's a way to force businesses to upgrade their machines to accept the new style of card.
However, banks are behind in meeting that deadline.
It's estimated 59 percent of consumers have not received their new cards yet.
