Nearly 100 people are upset after hundreds of dollars of fraudulent charges ended up on their accounts over the weekend.
Financial institutions are still working to figure out how the fraudulent charges happened. The Decatur Earthmover Credit Union doesn't believe it has anything to do with their ATM machines.
"We were kind of shocked to see this large amount of money come out of our account," says Erynn Williams Burge, one of the victims of credit card fraud. "My husband and I were home Saturday night, relaxing with the TV when we got a text notification saying $603 had been taken out of our bank account out of the blue."
Williams Burge and her husband went to talk to Decatur Earthmover Credit Union this morning. They were able to stop the card in which the fraudulent purchase was made.
"We learned that it was on my account that had been hacked. They had gotten our account number on the card and changed the pin so they could make a duplicate of the card and use it," explains Williams Burge.
Decatur Earthmover Credit Union says they're one of several financial institutions around Central Illinois seeing this problem.
"It could be anything. We always do checks on our ATM machines because you always hear about people putting skimmers on those machines," explains Barry Schmidt, the President and CEO of Earthmover Credit Union. "We check all of our machines to make sure there's nothing on those. We haven't found any evidence at any machines at this point, but it could happen at card processors, which are the people who process the transactions for Visa. It could be at merchant level. It could be a data breach."
Banks are continuing to work with customers to find a solution.
"Be vigilant about your account," advises Williams Burge, "I love the text messages and email notifications we get when we swipe our card."
"We're taking a look at every account that comes in," says Schmidt. " We look to see if there's a common merchant that they've used, to see if there's a data breach. We continue to work with the members so they can dispute the charge and we can get money back into their accounts."
Earthmover Credit Union is working with their processor and other card processors to try to find and fix the problem.
Those affected should receive a full refund for the fraudulent charges.
