One month ago today, three men walked into a Wal-Mart in Post Falls and attempted to buy in-store gift cards using a series of credit cards. Store managers grew suspicious and called police. That set off an investigation by local and federal authorities of a sophisticated scheme to steal credit card numbers from gas station customers, siphon funds from those accounts and launder the money through the purchase of retail gift cards.

The Florida-based suspects fled, and the Post Falls Police Department and the U.S. Secret Service are still identifying victims across the Inland Northwest. Potentially hundreds of account numbers were stolen from residents in the Spokane, Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene areas. “A lot of people were compromised. We still don’t know the full scope of this,” Post Falls police Detective Neil Uhrig said/Scott Maben, SR. More here.