CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — "One day you go to sleep with your money in your bank account. The next morning you wake up, all your money is gone," said Corpus Christi man Joshua Martinez.
On Monday, KRIS 6 News reported that customers of Rally Credit Union had been experiencing unauthorized withdrawals from their accounts.
Joshua Martinez was one of those customers.
“My first thought was my daughter. That was my first thought. Her birthday’s coming up, we have the holidays coming up,” he said.
Martinez noticed something wrong when he was out shopping at Walmart to grab a few items on Sunday.
“When I was checking out, my card kept saying declined. I stopped and went to an aisle, looked at my bank account information and it said I was in the negative 1000’s. All my money from my checking and savings was gone," he said.
Martinez was 1 of about 200 Rally Credit Union customers who had some or all of their money in their accounts stolen. Rally has about 200,000 members.
Rally credit Union President and CEO Dana Sisk stated that they were not hacked.
“A criminal ring got access to some debit card numbers. We believe most likely using skimmers at something like a local gas station. And then, they used that information to create counterfeit debit cards that they then used at Rally branches,” she said.
Many of those impacted frequent the branch on Airline Road near Alameda Street. Martinez uses the branch on Kostoryz near Mary Carroll High School. He headed back there on Monday and was able to get his money credited back to him the same day.
“After talking to her (bank teller) at Rally, she said for me to go file a police report. Went to the police department in Portland, since that's where all my money was taken out of. And, the police said that said they’ve been working on the situation for a long time already,” Martinez said.
Sisk said Rally Credit Union became aware when a flood of calls came in on Monday morning. She said they immediately took action.
“First thing we did, we put extra restrictions in place to prevent this type of transaction from occurring any further and then we started immediately issuing credit to those that had been impacted. And, at this point refunds have been processed for everybody that was impacted,” Sisk said.
Martinez said he is sticking with Rally Credit Union for the way they helped him out.
"It makes it a whole lot better knowing it wasn't Rally getting hacked. It was just one person or many people walking around scamming people's cards."
Martinez said he will be thinking twice about how he goes about using his debit card.
"My fiance and I were even talking about how to hide our cards while going to the grocery stores or even convenient stores," he said.
Sisk said Rally Credit Union has a lot of card data they have been going through to find a particular place where all those impacted made a purchase.
"I'd like to assure our members that Rally systems are secure, that we actually have no indication that Rally has been breached in any way," Sisk said.
Sisk advised Rally members to always keep a close eye on their finances. If someone notices something is wrong with their account, they should head to their nearest Rally Branch or contact the Rally support line.
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