Johannesburg - A pensioner stands at the ATM while a man grabs her card and takes just one step away.
Although he never actually touches her money from the cash machine, it will all be gone by the time she looks back - and so will he.
This was just one of the incidents of card scams and fraud caught on CCTV footage that was shown at a conference about card security in Sandton on Thursday.
The scam involves one “helpful” person who assists the ATM user, often a pensioner, to make a withdrawal while a second person stands nearby. “They look for easy prey,” said the chief executive of FNB’s credit card division, Johan Maree.
According to Henk Vermeulen, FNB’s fraud specialist for credit cards, the helpful scammer will grab the card as the machine spits it out and walk away, causing the ATM user to follow them instinctively. The second scammer can be seen in the CCTV video then simply grabbing the cash that is withdrawn and disappearing before the first man and the pensioner return to the machine.
An FNB survey indicated that nearly one-third of their 400 respondents have been victims of fraud, with the most common types being card swopping at an ATM and card cloning. Vermeulen also warned card users to be vigilant about their card details being captured by card skimming devices.
The skimmers are small rectangular boxes about four times the size of a matchbox, and can be swiped while hidden from the customer’s view in a waiter’s apron or below the counter at a toll booth.
“It’s so small that you can’t believe it can hold up to 2 500 (credit card) numbers,” said Vermeulen, adding that larger skimmers can hold up to 5 000 numbers.
These details can then be transferred onto any card with a magnetic strip, even to a parking lot ticket. Although scammers can occasionally use these details online, these criminals also need your PIN to use the cloned card effectively. “Without your PIN, it makes it so much more difficult for (the scammers to use),” said Maree.
Many jot down their PIN
The FNB card security report was compiled based on an online survey using 400 people and “focused on individuals who have a bank account and regularly use their bank card to draw cash and pay for goods”.
The survey focused on low, middle and high-income account holders, with about a third of respondents coming from each group. The incomes for each group were R2 000 to R100 000 a year for low income, R100 000 to R350 000 for middle and between R350 000 and R1.1 million for the high-income group.
Most of the respondents were from Gauteng, followed by the Western Cape and KZN.
One in five people said they have written down their PIN somewhere in case they forget it, which was advised against by Henk Vermeulen, FNB’s fraud specialist for credit cards. Thirteen percent of respondents believed that fraud would never happen to them, with 16- to 24-year-olds most likely to believe this.
Nearly one in five respondents said it was not necessary to cover your hand while keying in your PIN at a cashier in a store. Fifty-five percent of respondents said it was both the consumer and bank’s responsibility to protect their bank card against fraud.
“Shoulder surfing”, where a criminal watches over an ATM user to see their PIN, was the most understood crime.
The Star