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Hi All

Please take note of the following info and spread to your e-mail databases.  The use of card skimmers and cloning devices has dramatically increased lately.  The devices are mainly employed by organised criminal syndicates and are rarely used by individual criminals working on their own.  These incidents can only start growing in the run up to the soccer world cup.  Please note that the new generation of card skimmers / cloners are actually smaller than the card itself, making it very easy for the suspect to swipe your card while you are distracted by signing the authorisation slip. It only takes a fraction of a second to do and your card has been cloned.  Please pay very careful attention to where your card is at all times!!

Once your card has legitimately been swiped by the cashier, immediately take your card back into your possession.  There is no actual need for the cashier to keep hold of it, other than to verify the signature (which most don't actually bother to do).  If the cashier does actually request to see the signature, then you can show him/her the signature strip.  At least the card will now be under your control and this will cut down the chances of a criminal distracting you and skimming the card.  If you are at a restaurant, always request for a table top portable pay point to be brought to your table and if they don't have this facility, then ALWAYS follow the waitron to the actual pay point.  Do not trust anybody; it may end up costing you, literally!

Haden Searles

Chairperson - Dbn North & Umhlanga CPF (Sectors 1-7)

Waitresses caught skimming
25/03/2009 20:16  - (SA) 

Cape Town - Five people, four of them waitresses at a Cape Town International Airport restaurant, have been arrested following a tip-off about credit card skimming, police said on Wednesday.

National spokesperson Captain Dennis Adriao said the four, aged from 28 to 33, were arrested at a Spur outlet at the airport on Friday evening and had already appeared in court.

The arrest, by the commercial crimes unit and airport police, followed a tip-off from Absa's fraud unit.

Police found a "state-of-the-art" skimming device on one of the women.

They had been able to link it to fraudulent withdrawals from four patrons' accounts totalling about R40 000.

However it was likely that more people would come forward when they realised they had been fleeced, Adriao said.

Those arrests were followed by that of a fifth person, a waiter at an upmarket Sea Point restaurant, over the weekend. The arrest was linked to the same device, he said.

The waitresses were from Gugulethu and Nyanga on the Cape Flats, while the man from Philippi.

Adriao said it was too early in the investigation to say whether they were working for a larger syndicate, or operating merely as a group.

He warned people never to let their credit cards out of their sight, and to be "extra cautious" about who they handed them to.

He said the skimming device confiscated from the waitresses could hold the details of up to 500 cards.

It could be used to not only read cards, but clone them as well.

Possession of the device was in itself illegal, he said.

- SAPA

Suspicious vehicle - Red Nissan Hardbody JLP402GP (Tested false plates) - 6
A/M suspects observing CIT vehicle at Northmead Square Shopping Centre, 14th
Avenue, Northmead, Benoni. The vehicle and occupants left direction
unknown.