STRATEGIC PARTNERS
February 18, 2003
PITTSBURGH, Pa. -- Hundreds of bank customers in Pittsburgh and across the state had their ATM/debit cards canceled after a computer hacker stole some 8 million Visa, MasterCard and American Express account numbers nationwide from an unidentified third-party merchant payment processor.
According to a report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a spokeswoman for Citizens Bank in Pittsburgh said the bank deactivated between 8,000 and 10,000 ATM/debit cards bearing the MasterCard logo on Feb. 14 after receiving word about the security breach from MasterCard'sfraud unit.Roughly 2,500 Citizens customers in Pennsylvania and parts of New Jersey and Delaware were affected, spokeswoman Pamela Crawley told the Post-Gazette.
Citizens contacted the majority of affected customers on Feb. 16 and began mailing out new cards on Feb. 18, she said.
"It's really unfortunate and inconvenient, but our first priority was to make sure we protected our customers and those accounts," Crawley said. "As a precaution, we closed the accounts so they wouldn't be vulnerable."
There have been no indications of any unauthorized transactions with the stolen account numbers, she added.
PNC Bank, Pittsburgh's and the state's largest bank, was in the process of investigating whether any of its cards or customers had been hit, spokesman Pat McMahon said. A spokesman for National City Bank said the bank was unaffected by the incident.
Neither Visa nor MasterCard would say how many banks that issue cards under the Visa or MasterCard logos had been affected. Both said all affected financial institutions had been notified of the problem.
Visa issued a statement saying it was working with the unidentified payment processor to prevent future breaches.
