Sheplers Western Wear Alerts Customers Concerning Data Breach Affecting Retail Stores

-- Urges customers to carefully review their payment card statements.

FRISCO, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sheplers, the leading multi-channel western-wear retailer, today issued the following statement:

Sheplers has determined that our payment systems suffered a security breach in which hackers gained access to our systems and some of our customers’ payment card information was exposed. With the assistance of a leading computer security firm, we are continuing our investigation into this incident, and we are cooperating with law enforcement in their efforts to find the criminals responsible. Although our investigation continues, at the present time, we believe it is safe to use payment cards at Sheplers.

Our information to date indicates that the breach potentially impacts customers who used payment cards at Sheplers’ retail locations between June 11, 2014, and September 4, 2014. At this time, we do not believe that this incident affected our online webstore. Our investigation is continuing. The information at risk includes names, account numbers (for both credit cards and debit cards), and card expiration dates. To date, we have found no evidence that debit card PINs have been compromised. In addition, we do not believe that Social Security numbers, which are not stored on payment cards, could have been accessed in this incident.

The security of our customers’ information is extremely important to us. When we first received an informal tip from a financial institution suggesting the possibility of a breach, we hired a leading computer security firm to conduct a thorough investigation and suspended all electronic processing of payment cards for sales at our retail store locations until we could determine whether customer information was at risk. Unfortunately, our investigation determined that there had been a breach. We have now addressed the breach we identified affecting our retail store locations. We have implemented new security measures and we resumed processing credit cards in our stores only after determining that it was safe to do so.

We know that this news may be upsetting to our customers and we apologize for any inconvenience or anxiety this incident might cause.

We have set up a customer information line (855-731-6020) to answer questions customers may have. Customers can also contact Melanie Kirk of Sheplers at 316-219-7952. In addition, to protect our customers, we are offering AllClear ID’s fraud protection service, AllClear Secure, free of charge to any of our customers who used a payment card at any of our retail store locations between June 11 and September 4, 2014. This protection is specifically designed to assist people whose payment card information might have been compromised, and it is automatically available with no enrollment required. If a problem arises, simply call 855-731-6020, and a dedicated investigator will work to recover any financial losses and restore your credit if necessary.

We also urge customers who may have used a payment card at Sheplers between June 11 and September 4 to take certain steps:

• Carefully and promptly review your credit or debit card statements for unauthorized charges or debits and immediately report any suspicious ones to the card issuer.
• Be on the lookout for any calls or letters from retailers or creditors regarding merchandise or services you did not order. Promptly contact the merchant or card issuer to address these.
• If you have not received your credit and debit card statement on a timely basis, call your card issuer immediately.
• You may also review your credit report annually for no charge at www.annualcreditreport.com or by calling 877-322-8228 toll free.
• Consider placing a fraud alert on your credit file to protect against possible identity theft. You can report identity theft to any of the major credit bureaus as follows:

Equifax	Experian	TransUnion
P.O. Box 105069	P.O. Box 1017	P.O. Box 2000
Atlanta, GA 30348-5069	Allen, TX 75013	Chester, PA 19022-2000
800-525-6285	888-397-3742	800-680-7289
www.equifax.com	www.experian.com	fraud.transunion.com

As we move forward, we will continue to strengthen our security measures so that we can maintain a secure and safe shopping environment for our customers.