Skimming

Friday night. You had a great time at the football game, and now you’ve got to head back home. There’s only one problem: you’re running out of gas.

No big deal. There’s a BP station ahead. You make a right, enter the gas station, and start filling up your car. You’re hungry, so you decide to make a quick pit stop at the store in the station: some chips should suffice. Out of cash? No problem, just use that credit card your parents gave you.

You leave the gas station and get home. Everything seems to be fine, until the next day. Your parents start getting emails from the bank claiming that over the past six hours, you bought two plasma screen televisions, an iPhone 5, three gaming consoles, and a brand new laptop. What happened? What could have possibly gone wrong? We still have a month till Black Friday.

Well, remember the cashier at the gas station? It turns out that, at the time of your purchase, he was concealing a skimming device. Yep, that small little plastic thing he slid your card in. With it, he managed to get all of your information, and build a few virtual copies of your card to make all kinds of purchases.

Now, I know it seems like something that came straight out of CSI, but credit card skimming is very real. In fact, a few months ago, an employee at a BP station in Alpharetta got caught skimming cards. He now faces five years in prison and $86,000 in restitution to his victims and the federal government. He’s not the only one: after investigation on his case, the FBI concluded that there are approximately four more co-conspirators skimming credit cards in the Alpharetta/Johns Creek area.

So, anytime you see a cashier or vendor hold a very small plastic card skimmer in their hands, don’t let them finish the transaction. Odds are that they are trying to “skim” your card. Plus, I bet you didn’t need that new phone anyways.

Conrado Brenna

Source: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/man-sentenced-for-skimming-credit-cards/nRMRb/