If you have charged a purchase from the University Hospital dining services in the last six months, you could be a victim of fraud.
Hospital security and campus police are investigating the theft of thousands of dollars from unsuspecting customers. Police are speculating that someone obtained account information from debit and credit cards used in hospital retail food outlets.
Hospital security has received more than 40 reports of unauthorized debits or charges processed to individuals’ accounts this month. Police say the common denominator linking the victims is that all of them used debit cards at hospital retail food outlets.
Because most of the unauthorized transactions have been purchases made outside of Michigan, the FBI is helping with the investigation.
Police are pursuing several possibilities but currently have no suspects.
“It is too early in the investigation to rule out anything,” Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Diane Brown said.
Brown said causes could include glitches in the computer or network systems, employee theft and server or network hacking, among others.
“It’s a linear process from when you hand the card to the cashier,” Brown said. “It goes through a lot of steps, and you have to check all of those steps.”
On Oct. 20, DPS sent out an e-mail alerting University Medical System employees of the fraud investigation.
“As of October 13, all debit/credit services within the U-M Hospital retail food service were suspended until this matter is completely investigated and resolved,” the e-mail said.
However, signs at some hospital food stands yesterday read that the inability to accept debit and credit cards “is due to the system being down.”
“I didn’t even know what was going on until my co-worker told me the real deal,” said Deshauna Lewis, a nursing aide.
Lewis said one of her co-workers reported the theft of $2,000 charged to her debit account at a Wal-Mart in Mexico.
Aramark is the company the University contracts to provide food services to the hospital dining facilities that are under investigation. Aramark spokeswoman Sarah Jarvis said the company is cooperating fully with Michigan and is not a target of the investigation.
The amount of money stolen ranges from petty sums to several thousand dollars to entire checking accounts wiped out, Brown said.
“It’s real sad because people are here because of their loved ones,” Lewis said. “A lot of them can’t even afford to be eating here in the first place.”