You’ve heard it a thousand times: Never let your credit (or debit) card out of your sight. Granted, it might be a little awkward, or even embarrassing, to follow your server from your table to the cash register when you pay your check, but in the Washington D.C. area there are .75 million new reasons to do it anyhow.

Five servers at five upscale D.C. area restaurants have been arrested and charged with using skimmers to add $750,000 in debts to customers’ credit and debit cards.

The restaurants involved are Clyde’s of Gallery Place, M&S Grill, 701 Restaurant, Carrabba’s Italian Grill and the Gaylord Hotel.

The servers accused of credit card fraud are Lavelle Denise Payne, Shannon Eileen McLaughlin, Jamaal Snowden, Vasha Monique Carter and Simone Carrie Diane Folk. The servers allegedly funneled the credit card data to Joseph Artemus Bush III, Erick V. Burton and Aaron Gilbert.

Bush allegedly converted the stolen data to clone credit cards, used them to buy American Express gift cards at Target and Walmart stores, then used the gift cards to make purchases as expensive stores like Gucci and Barney’s of New York. He was caught several times by video surveillance camera conducting transactions using the counterfeit cards.

Skimmers are easy to buy, easy to use and easy to conceal as demonstrated in this video.

In the D.C. the stolen data stayed local, but very often the large caches of data are traded, bought and sold in forums and chat rooms on the Internet. LifeLock employs several tools and strategies to safeguard your personal and financial information, including eRecon, which monitors thousands of these websites.

Visit LifeLock.com to learn more. Enroll in their identity theft service using the LifeLock promo code Defense and pay only $9 a month – the lowest price available anywhere.

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