By Sasha Williams

Someone has been shopping online and trying to get the University of Louisville to foot the bill, according to reports from Fifth Third Bank. Officials in U of L’s purchasing department received word on Oct. 27 that an unauthorized person or persons tried repeatedly to charge transactions to university procurement cards using several different card numbers.

Authorized cardholders may use procurement cards from the university to purchase departmental supplies. But according to the report, 56 unauthorized attempts were made between Oct. 1 and Nov. 2, each time using a different card number. The majority of the attempted purchases occurred on the Internet.

Larry Owsley, vice president for Business Affairs, said this is not simply an issue of stolen cards. The university has a system for tracking the actual cards, and none of them are currently missing. Fifth Third Bank is working with the university to determine how so many different card numbers were accessed.

“We are trying to determine if our system or the bank’s system has been hacked into,” Owsley said, adding that they do not suspect faculty of foul play.

The costs of the attempted purchases were still being tallied as of Friday. Exactly what the person or persons was attempting to buy is still undisclosed. Owsley said Fifth Third has not found a pattern that would assist in identifying the source of the transactions.

Of the attempted purchases, 90 percent were stopped at the vendor level because the bank asked for additional information from the purchaser. When the information was not given, the transaction was cancelled. Because of an existing agreement with Fifth Third, U of L is not liable for the 10 percent of transactions that did go through.

“Each department should review their statements when they come in to make sure that the purchases were authorized,” Owsley said. Any unauthorized charges will be refunded.

“The university lost nothing,” Owsley said.

U of L is currently working with Fifth Third Bank to prevent similar instances of fraud in the future. They have also begun sending out security reminders to every department.

All 56 procurement cards with unauthorized charges have been cancelled. Each January, the cards are reissued to authorized cardholders. Owsley said next semester they are also considering issuing the card numbers as well.