Employee of the Year

Chapter 19 - Theory of Mind

A week later we gathered in the war room to meet Charlie’s new hire. His name was Ram Ramaswamy, a thin, brown-skinned man with a trimmed mustache dressed in jeans, a checkered button-down shirt, and sneakers. Ram was another one of those computer geniuses from India, but he wasn’t a nerd. He spoke very softly and deliberately. He was very calm and confident in all his words and actions. And he seemed very comfortable working with Americans. He seemed like he’d been in the country for a long time.

As I heard more about Ram’s background, I realized Charlie wasn’t bluffing about getting the very best IT security expert that money could buy. Ram had a long history of tracking down hackers and fraudsters for major banks and retailers all over the company. Many of the thieves he’d tracked down for corporate clients ended up in prison. I knew this was what Marcus was hoping for. He wanted to make an example of these thieves, to send a message that anyone who tried to break into our card data would spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

To celebrate Ram’s arrival at Passion, Charlie took us all out to lunch at a restaurant selected by the new hire. Ram chose a place on Pioneer Boulevard in the Little India section of Artesia. The restaurant had a buffet stand with more than a dozen different metal buckets full of spicy, colorful foods I’d never seen before. Curries, dhals, palak paneer, chicken tikka masala, and other dishes that I couldn’t even try to pronounce.

“This is a very specific sort of credit card crime,” Ram explained to us in his accented English over a plate of rice, yogurt, and vegetables. “A garden variety scam might just steal a card number to make purchases with lot amounts. But these Elite Gold cards are cleared for high amounts and large value transactions. The thieves are very focused on the big ticket items. They know that for large value transactions, the retail merchant taking the payment wants as much assurance as possible. That’s why the thieves are using security codes. They are armed with passwords and social security numbers. They enter the transaction with deep knowledge of the cardholder’s identity. They know they need to appear as convincing as possible to the merchant.”

            “You make it sound like what they’re doing is easy,” I said.

            “Well, it’s not that hard for a certain type of criminal who understands how the system works,” Ram shrugged, dipping a piece of bread into a bowl of yogurt. “There’s a whole black market for identities on the Internet, with buyers and sellers. They exchange different parts of an identity: a name, a driver’s license, a social security number, a signature. On the other hand, these thieves might be part of an integrated organization where they steal the identities and carry out the fraud themselves. There are a few different business models. And make no mistake; credit card fraud is a well-organized business, it’s a very big, international enterprise.”

            “How much does this information cost on the black market?”

            “Price is based on quality. It depends on the quality of the person whose identity you want to assume. If you want to buy the identity of an average cardholder, that will be pretty cheap. If you want to buy the identity of a successful professional or a business executive, like our Elite Gold members, well that’s going to cost extra. The thieves are specifically focused on high achievers, people with power, money, and success. That’s a very different profile than the average cardholder. The vast majority of credit card customers are the working poor; they are just struggling to make ends meet month to month. These identity thieves are only interested in impersonating the Elite Gold.”

            “So what do you think their model is?” Charlie asked. “Are they just scooping up these Elite Gold identities and fencing them out to the highest bidder on the web?”