Domino's Pizza App Used to Bust Credit Card Thieves

Criminals have been using Domino's pizza app to test stolen credit card numbers (from recent data breaches). According to the New York Times, police in Brooklyn were monitoring the social media accounts of multiple suspects when they noticed the Domino's logo and the question "Who wants pizza?" appearing on their Facebook timelines multiple times. The police called Domino's and the company revealed that there had been a "record spike in sales" in the area.

The police investigated the smartphones involved in these purchases and noticed that many of them had "a pattern of many unsuccessful credit card purchases — denied because the cards had been canceled — followed by a successful buy." Some accounts had anywhere between 50 attempts to nearly two thousand attempts in one month. Many would order upwards of $50 worth of pizza at a time.The pizzas ordered were often sold on the street where there is a "secondary market for pizza" according to a police chief. Fourteen people were arrested and charged with petty larceny, identity theft, or both.

Domino's was involved in another identity theft case earlier this year. Locations in France and Belgium were victims of a cyber attack where hackers stole 600,000 customer names, addresses, phone numbers, and email address. The hackers demanded a ransom of nearly $40,000 for the information.