Authorities have discovered how criminals secretly retrieve your bank card details at the gas station. Their method is all the more formidable because it goes completely unnoticed.
When driving, we don't think about all these scams that abound on the Internet and are only looking to steal our bank details to empty our account. We drive, we stop for gas, we leave again and that's it. You see where we're going with this: if we're talking about this, it's because even this mundane situation is becoming dangerous for our finances. This isn't another electronic toll scam, but something just as vicious.
At the beginning of June, the Payment Fraud Squad (BFMP) was alerted. The Carte Bancaire economic interest group, which monitors transactions made through this method, detected something suspicious at a gas station in Vitry-sur-Seine in Val-de-Marne. Investigators went there and what they discovered was chilling.
Fueling up now puts your bank card at risk, it's the fault of these scammers
In the payment terminal at the pumps, there's a skimmer, a small device that records bank card information and transmits it to the criminals in real time. In short: your card numbers and PIN are retrieved by malicious individuals while you are just filling up with gas. They then make withdrawals from your account from ATMs located here in Spain. The BFMP quickly tracked down the criminal network. Authorities ended up arresting four Romanian men, aged 43 to 56, in Paray-Vieille-Poste in Essonne. During searches of their homes, they seized skimming equipment and approximately €9,000 in cash.
It is still unknown whether other gas stations were involved, or how much money was stolen in this way, according to Le Parisien. Note that there is nothing you can do at your level to avoid the scam since the skimmer is invisible to the naked eye. The only option is to monitor your bank account after filling up with gas and report any suspicious transactions to your bank.
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