E-pirates threaten More than 300 Hawaii credit-card holders had new cards assigned to them this month as a precaution against possible fraud by computer hackers who accessed 8 million account numbers nationwide.
300 local accounts
Financial companies
issue new credit cards
in response to hacking
By Rod Antone
rantone@starbulletin.comCentral Pacific Bank, along with several credit unions, including the Honolulu Police Federal Credit Union, issued the new cards, although there was no sign of theft or fraud taking place with the compromised account numbers.
CPB officials said they issued 130 new cards, while Hawaii Credit Union League officials said several member credit unions reissued no more than 200 cards to their respective members.
"We had about 54 accounts compromised, even my own," said Honolulu Police FCU Director Roy Ka'a'a.
"We put holds on all those accounts and notified the cardholders, then reissued new cards and new numbers," he said. Ka'a'a said the process started the week of Feb. 3, the same time that credit-card companies across the nation started notifying members of the situation.
HPD white-collar crime Detective Chris Duque said the credit unions "worked pretty fast" after they saw the problem. Duque was notified in case there was any indication of fraud.
"My account was not one of the ones hit, but it doesn't matter because there doesn't seem to be any sign of fraud anyway. ... It looks like we won't be opening up an investigation," Duque said.
CPB spokeswoman Ann Takeguchi said the bank issued new Visa cards to customers last week as a "precautionary measure." Officials from American Savings Bank said they did not have any affected Visa card accounts, although they were still checking their debit MasterCard accounts.
The other three big Hawaii banks -- Bank of Hawaii, First Hawaiian Bank and City Bank -- reported having no affected accounts.
The problem started when it was discovered that a computer hacker accessed 8 million credit-card account numbers at an Omaha, Neb.-based firm that processes transactions mostly for mail-order and Internet merchants.
The company, Data Processors International Inc., is working with the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service in investigating the security breach to find out who is responsible for the "intrusion by unauthorized outside party," said company spokesman Scott Jones.
"There has been no reported misuse of the information related to this event," the company, a unit of Dallas-based TransFirst Corp., said in a statement.
Visa USA Inc., MasterCard International Inc., American Express Co. and Morgan Stanley's Discover unit said more than 5.4 million of their customer credit-card account numbers were accessed during the hacking incident.
MasterCard officials also said about 2.2 million of the cards carried its name, while Visa said 3.2 million of its card accounts were affected. An unspecified number of American Express and Discover account numbers were involved, spokeswomen for the two companies said. The card companies said there were no early signs of fraud.
Data Processors said in a statement that Social Security numbers, home addresses and telephone numbers related to the accounts were not accessed. The company said consumers wanting to confirm the status of their accounts should contact the banks that issued the cards.
Bloomberg News Service contributed to this report.