Crime
“At checkout terminals they design plastic covers that are identical to the top of a regular POS terminal,” police said.
A Santander automated teller machine. Angel Garcia/Bloomberg
The discovery of a skimming device attached to a bank ATM at an East Boston CVS has prompted police to warn the public about the ongoing scam.
Sometime between June 5 and June 6, a makeshift ATM card slot and a pinhole camera were removed from a Santander ATM inside a CVS at 210 Border St., police said.
Victims told police they noticed the card slot “felt tighter” than usual, and the pin pad seemed to differ in material from the rest of the plastic machine, the Boston Police Department wrote in a community alert.
The ATM also had a small hole drilled into it, which is common in pinhole camera use. Store decals were also observed to be missing from the machine, police said.
Skimmers are common in ATMs and point-of-sale terminals in pharmacies, gas stations, and grocery stores, BPD said.
Criminal organizations use card skimming devices to inherently copy the victim’s card information, which is then coded onto another credit, debit, or financial card, allowing thieves to make unauthorized purchases, BPD said.
Robbers have designed skimmers to look identical to ATM or POS machine parts. Pinhole cameras, sometimes the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen, are also commonly drilled near pin pads to record the victim’s PIN number, Boston police said.
“At checkout terminals they design plastic covers that are identical to the top of a regular POS terminal,” the Boston Police Department wrote.
The public can implement steps to protect themselves against skimming devices. Skimmers can be loosely attached to machines, so if any part of an ATM or POS machine is unsecure do not use it and contact the merchant immediately, police said.
Broken PIN pad lights are another sign that a machine may have been tampered with, police said.
Police advise the public to use credit cards rather than debit cards so they can bypass PIN requirements. It is also recommended to use some form of contactless payment, police said.
If a cardholder believes their card information has been stolen, contact the card issuer’s fraud department and immediately report the incident, deactivate the card, and get a new PIN, police said.
Sign up for the Today newsletter
Get everything you need to know to start your day, delivered right to your inbox every morning.
