POLOKWANE – Police in the city have warned residents to be on the lookout for a new form of card skimming or cloning.
This follows after several complaints were recently filed with the Polokwane police station.
Complainants said in their statements that their bank cards were skimmed and all their money stolen from their bank accounts before they realised what had happened.
A resident, Jack Venter, was one of the latest victims after he withdrew money at the ATM on the corner of Hans van Rensburg and Grobler Street last Friday.
He said he was approached by a man who was smartly dressed, wearing a suit and tie.
The man informed him that the bank was doing a survey on card users and the magnetic strips on the card.
He was told that the man needed to swipe his card through a handheld machine to see the condition of the strip and to see how long the card takes to respond after it has been entered.
“The man took my card and placed my card in the machine, after I typed in my code he immediately pressed 0 and my card was ejected.
“He said that I may have trouble at some of the ATM’s and should contact my bank for a new card soon. The man then walked off,” Venter said.
He said that the exchange with the well-dressed man did not bother him at all and he felt that the service was so good that he wanted to follow it up with the bank in a thank you letter.
It was only when he stopped to put fuel in his vehicle that he realised the card he had was not his own and his bank account was empty.
“I reported the matter to the police but there is nothing they can do.
“I lost my month’s salary and do not know how I will make all the payments I have to with no money,” Venter told Review.
Polokwane police spokesperson capt Ntobeng Phala said that residents should be on the guard when making card payments in the city as the new scam has been reported in several areas and places in the city.
He said that residents should report any suspicious people near to ATM’s to the security on the site and to the police immediately.
Phala warned that in most cases the same modus operandi was used.
He explained how the scam worked:
The perpetrators approach unsuspecting ATM users prior to or after concluding a transaction and claim to work for the bank.
The target is advised to ‘reactivate’ their cards by swiping the card through a ‘card reactivating device’.
The ‘card reactivating device’ is actually a handheld skimming/cloning device. This type of card skimming usually requires accomplices to find out the customer’s pin number.
The perpetrators use the stolen card information to manufacture a counterfeit or ‘cloned’ card and match the customer pin to the new card to make fraudulent transactions, or they simply switch cards, as in the case reported on.
