Card skimmers at a branch of Woolworths and a Total petrol station stole nearly £1 million using cloned cards before they were apprehended last year, according to two recent seperate UK court cases.
A Woolworths check-out girl who skimmed hundreds of customers' credit cards as part of a £650,000 fraud was gaoled for nine months at Southwark Crown Court last week.
The prosecution detailed how the 24-year old skimmed customer's cards as they paid for goods at the Potters bar store where she worked between April and September last year. A female accomplice who had turned her home into a card cloning factory was caught with the details of 850 stolen cards during a police raid in July 2002. She received an 18-month prison sentence.
In a seperate case, a cashier at a Total petrol station in West Wickham was gaoled for two years for his part in a £286,000 credit card skimming fraud. The petrol station and a number of addresses were raided in October and November last year after a lengthy investigation. Police identified 268 cards as part of the scam, but believe the number of cards counterfeited and total losses were far higher than those disclosed.
The UK banks are currently engaged in a national migration programme to replace mag-stripe signature authorisation cards with Chip and PIN-based authorisation in an effort to eradicate the threat from card cloners at the checkout.