Lecompton residents Mark and Yvonne Tunstall have spent much of the summer with three questions on their minds.

One: Who used their credit/debit card to bilk their bank account for more than $1,800? Two: Where the heck is Gallarate, Italy? Three, and perhaps most importantly: How did their credit card number fall into the hands of a thief?

Mark Tunstall first became alarmed June 26 when he went to a convenience store to purchase a pack of cigarettes and the clerk rejected his credit/debit card.

Tunstall said he knew his checking account had more than enough money to pay for the cigarettes, so he immediately called his bank. An automated message told him the account was about $700 in the hole. By the time he got to the bank that next morning, the amount had grown to $1,200. By the time the bank canceled the card, the charges had reached $1,876.35.

What made it all the more mysterious was that all the charges were made in Gallarate, Italy, a country that the Tunstalls had never visited.

“I said, ‘Where the hell is that?'” Mark Tunstall said.

The couple still don’t have a real good idea where the Italian town is, and they have no clue about who the thief is.

But they do have a theory about how their credit/debit card number fell into the wrong hands: credit card receipts.

Tunstall was sure the number theft wasn’t the result of someone gaining their credit card information over the Internet because the couple have never bought a single item on the Web.

Mark and Yvonne Tunstall were victims of a credit card scam, which ran up more than ,800 in charges. They fault receipts that print the credit card number and expiration date without obscuring the numbers. The Tunstalls are pictured Aug. 26 at their home in Lecompton.

“Everybody we have told this story to assumes we must have done some Internet shopping, but we have never done any shopping online, ever,” Tunstall said. “I know they say it is a secure Web, but I don’t care. It’s still a computer.”

After a review of their files, the Tunstalls found they had made purchases at three businesses that used an antiquated machine to print credit card receipts. Such machines print the entire credit card number on receipts. The majority of new credit card machines only print the last four to five digits on the receipt.

The theory is that someone associated with one of the businesses used the receipt to copy the Tunstalls’ credit card number.

“I can’t say for sure it was a business, but I have my strong suspicions that it was a business who sold my number to someone,” Yvonne Tunstall said.

“Now, I’m suspicious of everyone.”

Upcoming changes

Yvonne Tunstall, Lecompton, covers her credit card number on a receipt from an area retailer.

Yvonne Tunstall is not the only one who has suspicions about the machines. The Kansas Legislature passed a law in 2002 outlawing the machines. But lawmakers gave retailers until July 1, 2005, to get replacements.

The new law requires that the machines print no more than the last five numbers of a person’s credit card account on the receipt.

The bill passed handily, by votes of 39 to 1 in the Senate and 115 to 8 in the House. Marlee Carpenter, executive director of the Kansas Retail Council, said her group supported the bill even though it would create new mandates for merchants.

“We were generally supportive of the concept,” Carpenter said. “It helps protect against identity theft, so it seemed like a good idea. Nothing that we heard from our members showed that it would be prohibitive.”

It is not known how many retailers have made the changes ahead of the deadline.

Businesses respond

It’s also not known how many Lawrence businesses still use the old machines. The Tunstalls declined to name the establishments they had done business with, saying they did not want to cast undue suspicion upon them.

A random check by the Journal-World showed that at least some Lawrence establishments still use the machines.

The Citgo gasoline station at Ninth and Iowa streets is among them. Both the machine inside the store and the machines on the station’s pumps print the full credit card number.

Abbas Alavi, store manager, said he was aware of the situation and had received two complaints from customers in the past year. The station had plans to install new printing equipment in the next two months, he said.

The manager of Regal Nails, inside the Wal-Mart store at 3300 Iowa, confirmed his store’s machine also printed the entire credit card number, but he didn’t see any need to change.

The manager, a man who refused to give his last name, said he didn’t think the issue should concern customers because his business would never misuse the receipts.

“I don’t want to spend any more money for a machine that I already have and that still works,” he said. “I’ve never heard any complaints about it.”

Money for an upgrade, though, isn’t usually an issue, members of the credit card industry said. Rick Jernigan, general manager for CoCard, an Atlanta-based company that provides credit card processing services to merchants across the country, said many times new equipment isn’t even needed.

Instead, he said, a software upgrade for the existing machine does the trick. And Jernigan said his company would provide the software update at no charge.

Companies had better get used to making the changes, though, Jernigan said. He predicted the federal government soon would mandate that credit card receipts have no more than five digits.

Lawmakers, Jernigan noted, are quickly understanding the old machines are ripe for fraud.

“It’s not becoming a bad situation because it already is a bad situation. There’s a pretty big industry of credit card skimmers out there,” Jernigan said, referring to people who misuse the receipts.

Yvonne Tunstall said she was quickly losing respect for businesses that won’t make the change unless they are forced to.

“I think it is terrible customer service,” Tunstall said. “It is awful for the consumer because you are paying for their products and keeping them in business, but they’re not looking out for your interests at all.”

Being alert

Sgt. Mike Pattrick, a spokesman with the Lawrence Police Department, said he did not have data to show how prevalent the problem was in Lawrence.

“I can tell you that the department has seen identity theft in several different ways,” Pattrick said. “We have seen that kind of activity. Unfortunately, it’s only one of many ways they can get your information.”

Pattrick said it was not a correct assumption to always blame businesses when a credit card receipt falls into the wrong hands. If consumers aren’t careful about disposal of the receipt, he said, thieves could get the information from the trash or by picking up a receipt that is just laying around.

“If you don’t want people to get that information, you have to be responsible enough to destroy it so that it isn’t useable,” Pattrick said.

As for the Tunstalls, their ordeal had a semi-happy ending. Their bank credited their account with the full amount that the thief had charged.

Mike Norris, a vice president with the Kansas Bankers Assn. said that isn’t a standard policy for every bank. He said there are instances where account holders may be liable for a loss. He suggested consumers talk with their bankers about how they handle fraud cases.

The Tunstalls said the incident taught them to be more alert when they’re using their credit card. Now, if they charge something at a place that uses the old machine, they’ll take a pen and scratch out all but the last four numbers on both copies of the receipt.

“It’s a pain because it takes more time and sometimes it holds up the line, but that’s why they ought to change the machines,” Mark Tunstall said. “And it is not like I want to call anyone untrustworthy, but that’s my money they’re dealing with.”