Criminals Selling Stolen MN Credit, Debit Cards After Home Depot Breach

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- With the simple click of a mouse, a total stranger can buy your credit card.

Mark Lanterman is chief technology officer for Computer Forensic Services.

"You can filter the cards based on expiration date as well as the last four digits of the credit card," Lanterman said.

He says an underground crime shop, Rescator, is hawking thousands of stolen credit and debit cards with Minnesota zip codes.

New cards, linked to the recent Home Depot data breach, are showing up daily.

"It's essentially an Amazon.com for credit card thieves," he said.

Thieves can even search cards by brand, bank, state and city -- meaning it may be easier for a thief's purchase to go undetected by your financial institution.

"If you live in Minneapolis and your stolen credit card information is being used in Minneapolis, then it tends to fly under that fraud detection," Lanterman said.

The bottom line? If you've made a purchase on a card at Home Depot recently, you should be checking your statements for any red flags.

"They shouldn't just think 'Well it won't happen to me,' because it will happen to them," Lanterman said.

Investigators believe the Rescator marketplace is run by the same hacker responsible for the Target breach last year, but their identity is still a mystery.

Both the Home Depot and Target data breaches are under investigation.