House Bill 1050 sensibly updates and toughens up our credit card fraud statutes. Brought by Rep. Hugh Bartels (R-5/Watertown), HB 1050 revises the law in two important ways:
- HB 1050 adds “computer chip” to the info-tech you can’t “access, read, obtain, memorize, or store, temporarily or permanently” from payment cards without authorization. Right now, the statutes only forbid messing with the magnetic strip or stripe.
- HB 1050 makes owning or possessing a reëncoder or scanning device with the intent to unauthorizedly obtain or alter information on a payment card a Class 6 felony. Most other credit card hijinks are already a Class 6 felony, but currently, mere possession of a scanner or reëncoder with nefarious intent is only a Class 1 misdemeanor.
Carrying more guns won’t stop credit card thieves from skimming our cards at the gas station and the ATM. But HB 1050 will help us bag and punish the turkeys who try.