Another credit-card skimmer found on gas pump

A second Franklin County gas station has been found with a credit-card skimmer hidden inside one of its pumps.

The device, which allows a thief to steal a person’s credit-card information, was found Friday inside a pump at the Marathon gas station at 911 N. High St. in Worthington, according to Worthington police.

An employee of the Franklin County auditor’s office contacted police after finding the device during a routine inspection. It is not known how long the skimmer was on the pump.

The device found in Worthington had the ability to capture both credit-card information and pin numbers for debit cards, Dave O’Neil, a spokesman for the auditor’s office, said.

It’s the second skimmer that has been found on a gas pump in Franklin County this week. One also was found Tuesday on a pump at a Marathon station at 215 W. Bridge St. in Dublin, though it was designed to record only credit-card numbers. The station owner found it and reported it to the auditor’s office.

O’Neil said it’s less likely that card information from either device compromised someone’s personal information because neither device was Bluetooth capable, meaning the skimmer had to be physically retrieved by the thief to then gather the information.

The auditor’s office conducts random checks at gas stations throughout the year. All pumps are checked at least twice a year.

“It is striking that we had never had one in our jurisdiction,” O’Neil said of the skimmers, “and we found two in the span of 72 hours.”

Police said customers of either the Worthington or Dublin Marathon stations who paid at the pump should carefully check bank statements for suspicious credit or debit-card activity.