18 August 2008 Gang skims 20,000 bank cards in shops sting By Stephen Rogers
GARDAÍ are hunting a gang who skimmed more than 20,000 bank cards from sales terminals in Irish shops.
The scam has forced banks to restrict withdrawals by account holders to just €100 per day when travelling outside the country.
Una Dillon, head of card services at the Irish Payment Services Organisation, said the criminals went into the shops pretending to be doing maintenance work on behalf of the banks. “We have discovered only in the last 48 hours that a number of retailers have been affected by a point-of-sale compromise,” she said. “We are in the lucky position that it was discovered quickly and the gardaí are working on it. Gardaí have uncovered a lot of the devices and CCTV footage. We have a list of all the card numbers that have been used. They have either been blocked or restrictions put on those cards. With the devices recovered it may just be that the cards were only saved and the criminals did not have a chance to get hold of the card numbers.”
Ms Dillon said the banks and gardaí had done a lot of work over the weekend. “There will be an emergency meeting today with the gardaí, the terminal vendors and the banks to try and close down on this,” she said, adding the gardaí were in pursuit of the gang. The criminals have been going into shops claiming to be engineers working on the terminals. Staff are used to their bank officials coming to update terminals so unfortunately they have been able to do that. We have been working with a number of the larger chain stores to make sure that does not happen. Unfortunately a lot of people were unavailable over the weekend so I would expect by lunchtime today anyone who might be affected would know about it and put preventative measures in place.”
Bank of Ireland estimated 3,100 of its debit and credit cards were affected and Ms Dillon said the other eight card providers could have similar numbers. Bank of Ireland said, as a temporary measure, it had reduced the daily withdrawal limit on all its debit cards for ATM transactions outside Ireland to just €100 to protect customers from fraud. “The bank advises this measure will be in place for the next 48 hours,” it said.
The Finn family from Carrigtwohill in Co Cork were among those affected by that restriction. John Finn tried to withdraw money in southern Spain but was told his debit card had exceeded its limit. “Why did the banks not have the courtesy to let us know this was happening? It is an appalling way to treat customers,” he said.
BOI Limits ATM Withdrawals Abroad
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