Woman has life savings emptied by fake card reader

It comes from The Mirror/BookFace so take with a pinch of salt

Whether or not the story is true (I’ve no idea). I am surprised this still happens, I know it’s easier for them to target the elderly but the amount of money/time banks and other companies have used to say “never give your details to someone over the phone or email” makes me surprised this still happens

In South Africa, some employees at petrol stations or restaurants use fake machines to gather your information. They present you with the machine, you insert the card and type in the pin and then the machine reads some sort of error. The employee then says the machine might not be working so they go get a different one (this one is the real one). They then complete the payment on the real machine. With your card details and pin, these guys usually clone your card, go to the atm and withdraw as much cash as possible. Once the cash is gone it can’t be easily traced and the bank will never be able to recover it.

I find this particular story much harder to believe. They needed to know full name, phone number and address (which is maybeee doable), but also correct BANK. If I’m with Barclays, and I receive card thingie from other bank, scam would fall apart. Seems like this person either got her details seriously compromised, or it’s a phony article. :wink:

At first I thought the fake card reader would be an actual EMV terminal (so every time the victim tried to use it they would be actually paying for something) but in this case the card reader is completely legitimate - the scam revolves around the fraudsters convincing the victim to use the (legitimate) card reader to authorise their transactions.

I’m kinda disappointed now to be honest, I was looking forward to seeing new innovations from the underground but this scam is as basic as it can get.

Okay so that is a real card reader this article is headed “fake card reader” what’s happened here is someone has phoned the customer and manipulated her into using a genuine reader and giving out codes! Card readers don’t need to be be cancelled!

But this is something that does happen I’ve come accross it before. The letter says quite clearly Don’t give out information from the card reader over the phone! This is a shame though I feel bad for her.

1 Like

I wouldn’t be surprised if they already had malware on her computer/phone (which would easily give them all this information) and the only thing they were missing is the authorisation code form the actual card so they sent her a reader and convinced her to use it.

1 Like