Hawks warn card-users as skimmers net R453m

THERE has been a massive 23 percent spike in card fraud last year when the amount of money skimmed from card fraud victims leapt from R366 million to R453m, Hawks investigator Jerome Hardenberg said yesterday.

Hardenberg also said that the police and bank investigators had seized 1 377 hand-held skimming devices from 2005 to last year.

According to the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric), hand-held skimming devices are one of the country’s biggest contributors of counterfeit card fraud.

But the Western Cape’s police commercial branch has been clamping down on fraudsters.

A fraudster known as Ramsey had conned people out of R7m, Hardenberg said during a press briefing at the police’s provincial head office in Green Point.

He said Ramsey was now serving 18 years in prison. Another fraud- ster, who Hardenberg named Massimo, had received a 15-year jail sentence for fraud worth R1m.

But this year alone, the police’s commercial branch had arrested 40 people and confiscated several skimming devices.

Hardenberg said when a card was swiped through a skimming device, the card’s information on its magnetic strip was recorded on the device.

“There is usually a USB port on the device which is linked to a laptop where the information is downloaded.”

Diners paying their restaurant bills through a card machine should notify the establishment’s manager when told the card machine did not work, he said.

Sabric executive chairperson Kalyani Pillay called for people to be cautious when typing in their card PIN numbers, making sure the key pad is properly covered. She also cautioned against using an ATM if the screen layout was unfamiliar.