January 26, 2010
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News: Credit Card Thief On Campus
A thief infiltrated University of West Florida's Center for Fine and Performing Arts departments. Four credit card fraud incidents have been reported to the authorities. Eric Engelmeyer, a procurement card administrator notified the Assistant Professor of Theater, Glenn Breed, that his school credit card and personal debit card had been used for unauthorized transactions on the internet. According to police records, the thieves had charged over $300 on the two cards. According to the University, their network security is designed to keep malicious attacks off their network. Michael Dieckmann, Senior Associate Vice President for Information Technology Services, said, “security of credit card transactions”is totally dependent upon the Web site conducting the transaction. It has nothing to do with UWF's network, or the many networks in between the client and the Web site.”
Wendy Baudin, Procurement Manager, said that these types of credit card fraud generally stem from when an individual makes a purchase over the internet and someone has acquired the card information. Baudin also stated that it's very difficult to know who obtained the credit card data and the thief could be located anywhere in the world. Betsy Bowers, Associate Vice President for Internal Auditing, said the university has had a very low incident of card fraud; only around ten over the past three years.
Margaret Willers, the Music Administrator, and Jennifer Feysa, the Art Administrator, also reported that their University credit cards had been compromised. Together the thief or thieves racked up nearly $1,500 of fraudulent transactions on their cards. According to the university, each department has their own account manager that monitors the cards' transactions. Whenever they see something that looks suspicious, they immediately notify the authorities. All of the card accounts in question that have revealed fraudulent charges have been shut down and can no longer be used.