CARMEL - A couple busted in Carmel for cloning credit cards and now local investigators and the U.S. Secret Service are linking them to crimes up and down the state.
The Monterey County Sheriff's Department says the couple may have swindled local companies out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
One former victim said little can be done to stop these crimes.
"It's the sign of the times and the economy is in a position where people are going to try to get away with as much as they possibly can get away with," said Gasper Spadaro, owner of Gasper's Jewelers in Monterey.
Spadaro said he saw it with his own eyes -- thieves posing as customers with bogus credit cards.
They cloned a card by using a swiping tool to get your information and transfer it to a fake card.
Spadaro wasn't a victim this time, but was in the early 90's.
"It was normal," he said. "I mean they came in, looked around. They were tourists. They looked at two watches, purchased two watches, and she also wanted this pearl necklace I had, and so she bought that."
He said he was shocked because they gave a driver's license and a credit card and all the information matched up.
When they went to go swipe the card, he said everything was authorized.
"There's no way to know for sure," he said. "You got the doors open and somebody walks in the door. You try to make a sale. You make the sale then you find out later the card wasn't any good."
Now it's happening again.
Monterey County Sheriff's deputies arrested Otis Hickman and Jazzmin Cooper for using cloned credit cards at at least six businesses on the Peninsula.
Inside the couple's house in Contra Costa county, investigators found what they called a "large cloning operation."
Spadaro's worried he could be a victim again.
He said at the end of the day, there's nothing he can do.
"Your hands are tied. You're at the mercy of the credit card holder.They're notifying us by the credit card machines when we run them through to find out whether or not the card is any good," Spadaro said.
Police said these sorts of crimes are why you should always check your credit card statement.
The couple is still in jail.
