Latest News > 27 June 10 - Gang Caught for Chip-and-Pin Scheme

 

A group of U.K. thieves has been caught after siphoning off £725,000 from gasoline customers' credit and debit cards in a chip-and-pin scam, the BBC reports. 

 

The gang secretly fitted devices in chip-and-pin readers that gave them access to duplicate credit and debit cards. The thieves burned a small hole in the reader's back to insert a memory chip and Bluetooth reader. Sometimes, retail staff knew about the scheme, which netted $1.1 million over a nine-month period.


Gasoline stations in Cambridgeshire, Leicestershire, Kent, Bristol and Sussex, Southwark Crown Court were targeted by the group. The leader, Theogenes De Montford, received a four-and-a-half year prison sentence after he admitted to defraud and conspiracy charges.


De Montford's laptop housed data for 35,000 cards, with 7,000 from just one gasoline station. Garage franchise owner Amrik Kalsi had his business decline by 47 percent after customers lost money from their accounts after visiting his store and pumps.


A Facebook group had campaigned to urge customers to boycott Kalsi's forecourt, a move the judge called "totally unjustified." Kalsi also received verbal abuse from customers defrauded by the gang.


"He [De Montford] was perhaps one of the most prolific chip-and-pin fraudsters in the U.K.," said Prosecutor Adam Budworth. "Since his arrest there has been a significant reduction in the number of chip-and-pin frauds in the U.K."




 

 

 

 

 

 

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