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Arrests Made In California Debit-Card Skimming Scam

Written by Evan Schuman
May 12th, 2008

California authorities have arrested two men in connection with another retail card-reader switch scam, an effort that police say brought in about $225,000 from 222 victims who swiped their debit cards at a regional grocery chain.

The arrests were in connection with the debit-card thefts at California grocery chain Lunardi’s, where police say the pair swapped out part of the card-reader with a skimmer, according to this San Jose Mercury News story. It was unclear whether the data was collected by piggybacking on the store’s network, wirelessly or if thieves retrieved the data by re-swapping the machines later. The Lunardi’s store that was hit is based in Los Gatos. The paper also reported that a nearby Los Gatos Arco gas station suffered a very similar debit-card breach a couple of weeks earlier.

Posted in Payment Systems, Security/Fraud
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