It is rare to catch an identity
thief in the act. However, the Tukwila Police Department reports that an alert
citizen noticed that the seal on a local gas pump was broken and that a door to
the inside of the machine appeared to have been tampered with. The citizen
pointed it out to the manager who found a credit card skimmer inside.
Most credit card skimmers are
placed over the top of the credit card slot. Customers may be able to detect
them by trying to wiggle the slot. This skimmer requires insertion inside of
the pump completely hiding it inside. The skimmer stores the collected
information on an internal hard drive. The ID thief needs to come back to the
pump to collect the information.
Tukwila police took the skimmer as
evidence then replaced it with a hidden camera. When the ID thief returned, video
showed confusion then “a deer in headlights look” when he realized that the
skimmer was gone, and he had a camera pointed at his face.
Tukwila PD says that there were
about 60 transactions at the pump that could have been collected by the
skimmer. It does not believe that any transactions were compromised because the
ID thief needed to physically collect the information from the skimmer.
The video shows two males and a
2016-2018 Nissan Rogue SUV involved with this operation. One male, with distinctive
tattoos on his knuckles, opened the pump to retrieve the skimmer while a second
male stood by blocking the view from the external camera from the building and
acting as a lookout. If you know who these people are, please email the Tukwila
PD at tips@tukwilawa.gov
with the case number 18-5521 in the subject line.
This is the first report of a card skimmer inside a gas pump
that I have seen in Puget Sound. While any skimmer can be difficult to detect, most
people probably do not jiggle things before inserting their bankcards, a
skimmer placed inside of a gas pump makes detection more difficult. Fortunately,
in this case, the ID thief broke a seal and did enough damage so that a
customer became suspicious and reported the pump to the onsite manager. Being
wary of where you insert your bankcard is not paranoia, it is merely taking precautions.
Another action that you can take at the gas pump is to pay for your gas inside
the store/office.
Tukwila Police Department:
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