The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) is investigating after learning its tickets were being sold on the online black market for a fraction of the regular price.
In a post that went viral on Snapchat last week, a scammer was offering a monthly STM pass and an OPUS card for $60. If the customer returns the following month, the same title will be sold to him for only $50.
This is a 47% saving achieved without STM knowing. In fact, a monthly pass sold at an authorized retailer typically costs $94 per adult.
Screenshot / Snapchat
“It even cheats travel [dans les transports en commun]I love my city so much”, writes a surfer jokingly, who shared the ad on social networks.
They cannot be hacked
When contacted on the matter, STM was adamant: you cannot “hack” OPUS cards as advertised on the black market.
“She cannot be ‘unblocked’. You must encrypt a ticket on the OPUS card using one of our point-of-sale devices or at an authorized retailer,” it explains. Register Its spokesman, Justin Lord-Dufour.
Screenshot / Snapchat
The latter adds that adding a wrong transit ticket cannot be simulated working on the STM network.
Bank fraud
According to Mme Lord-Dufour says the fraudster buys legitimate titles with stolen credit cards. The criminal sells his loot on social networks.
“It may happen that the title card promised by the fraudster is not encoded on the card and the customer is tricked into paying an amount without receiving a transit title in return,” he warns.
According to the Société de Transporte, this would be a matter of bank fraud, not fraud directly linked to the OPUS card. “An investigation has been opened at STM to confirm that our hypothesis is correct and that the OPUS card was not hacked,” it said.
The Register We reached out to the internet user behind the scheme on social network Snapchat, but our request went unanswered.
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