Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
ROY — A Utah grocery store customer and employee are to thank for uncovering a fraud scheme in the store, before potentially thousands of people became victims.
Roy police said that store wasn't the only business recently hit, as they now give out a public warning.
Scanning groceries and goodies at an Ocean Mart check stand Saturday afternoon, Sandy Li rang up customers with friendly conversation.
Her register featured a few recent changes to the card reader, after a customer and employee made a discovery.
Apparently, a customer accidentally bumped the keypad on the card reader and it came off. Separately, an employee noticed the card-swiping strip was coming apart, and upon closer inspection, could see it was a faux addition just like the keypad.
The card machine attachments appeared to be milking customer data.
'That's kind of crazy'
Li explained she was working when the employee removed the card-swiping strip dupe.
"They pop out and then we see. It's like, 'Gee, that's really, it's same'… You couldn't even tell," she said. "We was like, 'Wow, that's kind of crazy.'"
Officer Stuart Hackworth from the Roy City Police Department explained they responded to Ocean Mart two separate times — once for the keypad, and then a second time for the card swiper.
Pulling both pieces out of the bag, he held them up to an Ocean Mart card reader to show how well they blended in. He said they've taken a couple of card skimming cases at different businesses recently.
Another reader was confiscated from a gas station pump.
He guessed the skimmers likely swiped data from thousands of customers.
"We don't know how long it had been here," he said, of the Ocean Mart skimmer. "But by the by the looks of it, it looks like that there was quite a few cards that were scanned using this device."
When comparing side-by-side, the card reader with the skimmer attached is ever-so-slightly larger. The keypads were virtually impossible to tell apart.
While they're hard to detect, it's even more difficult for police to crack the case.
"We don't have a lot, because of the timeline. It's unknown when it was put on," Hackworth explained, of why it'd be extremely difficult to track down who may have installed it.
He said he consulted with a federal agent on the skimmers, and found out that they needed to be physically removed in order to extract the data off small chips inside the skimmers.
So they don't believe Ocean Mart customers had their data compromised.
But, he said other devices can use Bluetooth capabilities and work off Wi-Fi to send the card information.
Tips to stay safe
He explained the best way to tackle card skimmers is through prevention, by paying attention to the card reading devices.
"Take an extra second or two to look at the device and see if anything's out of place," Hackworth said.
He said the surest way to avoid fraud is to tap the card chip on the reader rather than swiping it, or to use a pay app on a cell phone.
For businesses, Hackworth suggested they mark the readers with tape and check them regularly.
That's what Ocean Mart is now doing. When Li is checking people out, the card reader has red tape around it to show it hasn't been tampered with, and she explained the keypads now have secret serial numbers hidden in them.
"So every day we checking, like in the morning and the night time," she said.
That way they can make sure no scammers are skimming there.
"We don't want the skimming things to happen again," Li said. "We definitely don't want that happen in here, and hopefully anywhere."
