Credit Card Numbers Stolen From Sweetbay

Shannon Weidemann

Contributor

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The Sweetbay Supermarket, a Florida chain of grocery stores, and Hannaford Bros. announced last week that 4.2 Million credit card and debit card numbers were obtained during store transactions. Over 1800 cases of credit card fraud have been reported. The credit & debit card numbers were illegally obtained during the card authorization process.

Hannaford was notified of unusual credit card activity by its data processing company on Feb. 27 and immediately began working with law enforcement on an investigation, said Michael Norton, a company spokesman.

Since the investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made, Norton was reluctant to explain how the numbers had been obtained.

But he was confident that a similar breach would not happen again.

It is unknown how the security breach occured. The fraud is being investigated by the U.S. Secret Service. Two class action lawsuits have been filed on behalf of the customers involved. Shoppers are urged to check with their credit card companies and banks to see if their numbers were taken. No personal information was obtained during the security breach.