Arizona state government officials are stepping up efforts to thwart criminals from skimming consumers’ credit and debit card information at gasoline stations in response to a recent uptick of such incidents.
Now Colorado law-enforcement agencies also are seeing a rash of card-skimming incidents.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer last month directed the state’s Department of Weights and Measures to increase inspections of gasoline pump payment terminals, and the agency is asking gas station operators and consumers to report suspicious devices and activities.
The move is a response to an increase in reports of card-skimming devices found in the payment terminals of gas pumps in various regions of the state, including Maricopa, Yuma and Kingman counties, Shawn Marquez, director of compliance programs for Arizona’s weights and measures department, tells PaymentsSource.
The agency within the past six months has received some three-dozen calls from law-enforcement departments around the state reporting the discovery of tiny devices measuring about two inches long apparently attached to gasoline pump payment terminals to capture consumers’ card data. Crooks use the data from the cards’ magnetic stripes to create counterfeit cards.
“This year we began to receive more calls than usual about card-skimming devices, and we are taking action now to educate and warn consumers and gas station owners,” Marquez says.
The agency this year plans to increase the frequency of pump inspections and will increase training in detecting card skimmers for its officers, Marquez says.
Colorado law-enforcement agencies report a rise in card-skimming incidents at gas stations around the state beginning in June. A spokesperson at the Colorado Springs Police Department tells PaymentsSource that in at least one case criminals used card numbers skimmed locally to make fraudulent purchases in California.
Though card-skimming activity is sporadic, gas-pump payment terminals remain a magnet for this type of crime, Jose Diaz, director of technical and strategic business development for Thales e-Security Inc., tells PaymentsSource.
“Card skimming is one of the simplest ways to counterfeit cards, but fraudsters are continually making use of increasingly sophisticated technology to skim card data at the point of sale,” Diaz says, noting even savvy fraud experts have difficulty staying ahead of criminals in this area. “Gas stations are particularly vulnerable because they are typically unattended, and fraudsters have wide-open access to them.”
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