Credit Card Skimmers...
Crime doesn't pay or so they say... If you don't get caught it probably does pay and that's why so many scammers are making careers out of cheating people. As we deal less with cash & checks and more with debit & credit cards the chances of getting scammed become greater.I was coming back from a project in downtown Miami and stopped for gas. I paid at the pump with my business debit card and bought lunch & a drink with my personal debit card. The attendant had a smile on her face as I swiped the card and entered my PIN. It did seem odd why she was smiling. Two days later my bank phoned as I was overdrawn and they wanted to verify some recent purchases. $7 at a convenience store, $25 at a fried chicken restaurant and nearly $2,000 at a grocery store. the $7 was me and the other 2 were fraud. My comment was who can buy $2,000 in groceries without drawing suspicion? Both purchases were in the downtown neighborhood.
Chip cards have reduced the amount of ATM or POS fraud, but not all businesses use them. Typically, a thief will install an overlay to the existing card skimmer that reads cards before the real card reader. There is a 2nd add on device with a tiny camera recording keypads to see what the user types for the PIN. The thieves return to retrieve their equipment and use the data to steal money from the people who used the ATM's while the devices were installed.
The video attached shows surveillance how quickly someone can install a credit card skimmer.
Comments (5)
Fess up. A bit too much in the champagne and caviar aisles, eh Chat ?
Seriously, the police should question the cashiers to see which one rang up $2,000 worth of items,
and all they remember about the thieves.
I started to get identical test charges to my card in groups of 4. I was racking my brain trying to figure out where I might have had done 4 charges. Chinatown? That sushi restaurant in Brooklyn?
Then I remembered swiping my card to get the 3 day passes for the subway. I thought I could get all three at once. I couldn't, so I cancelled that first transaction and did 3 individual swipes to buy the passes. That was 4 swipes.
I remember that morning clearly. 8:30am on a sunny Monday morning. Rush hour. The subway station bustling with activity. One or more ticket machines skimming credit card information from hundreds and hundreds of people....
No one in authority wanted to know about my evidence, my facts. Not my bank. Not the NY Subway system authorities, not even the NY Times reporter who published an article on how the subway system computers were running slow Monday morning for no apparent reason.
I tried to make people listen. The bank simply closed down my card and reimbursed me for bogus charges. "Don't worry. You will get all your money back." No one wanted to panic the population with the thought that this was one of many routine skimming operations harvesting hundreds of thousands card numbers.
The time my daughter and I got hacked we were at a fancy steak house, we each paid me with credit card, her with her debit card. Both cards had bogus charges the next day. Like aftershox said, no one seemed to care, I was dumb founded when the restaurant didn't care. We were issued no cards and our funds restored.
Scary virtual pirates out there.