Debit card skimming scam hits Brandon

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/05/2018 (2666 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A debit card skimming scam that dates back several months is rearing its ugly head this week, resulting in a swift response from local financial institutions.

Westoba Credit Union immediately discontinued approximately 1,000 cards within the past couple of days, urging affected members to attend their nearest branch to secure replacement cards.

Compass Credit Union is reaching out to members with flagged cards to change their PIN numbers, and Sunrise Credit Union is sending a similar precautionary message to those with flagged cards.

It’s an issue that all financial institutions deal with on a regular basis, Sunrise Credit Union vice-president of strategic development and wealth management Tayona Johnas said.

Calling cases like this “a daily thing,” she said that fraud attempts are commonplace in the financial industry, and that “there’s always someone attempting to skim information from unsuspecting people.”

In this case, Compass Credit Union chief executive officer Arnie Guist said that the debit card skimming appears to have originated at a fast food outlet in Brandon several months ago.

While details on this case remain limited, including which outlet it might have been, Johnas said that fraudsters typically attach technology to debit card machines, which is used to record information from cards, including PIN numbers.

The fraudster appears to have sat on the debit card information they gathered until recently, at which time Guist said their attempted interactions would have been flagged by various financial institutions’ fraud alert systems.

Guist said that those members who had their cards flagged were being contacted by credit union employees and being urged to change their PIN numbers.

At Westoba Credit Union, chief operating officer Salman Khan said that those members with debit cards that had been flagged were cancelled earlier this week, and that they were in the process of contacting everyone who had been affected and encouraging them to pick up fresh cards.

On this front, he said that members should always make sure their financial institution has up to date contact information on file.

While he said that debit card skimming is a problem they tackle on a regular basis, it’s rare to see it occur at this scale.

“One-thousand cards; that’s a big one,” he said.

Despite the scope of this problem, Khan said that it hasn’t cost members any money, with the fraudsters failing to withdraw anything from the affected accounts.

Guist said that while he was uncertain as to whether anything had been withdrawn, the credit union has a policy to reimburse members when they are defrauded out of no fault of their own, as would have been the situation in this case.

While debit card owners might not be at fault in this scam, Johnas said that she does have advice for people to help avoid situations like this.

Tap and go and chip cards are among the most secure options, she said, discouraging people from swiping their cards, which makes it easier for fraudsters to steal information.

When in doubt, she said that people should change their PIN numbers to play it safe.

Leadership at CIBC’s two Brandon branches hadn’t found any debit cards flagged, those at Vanguard Credit Union declined comment until they know more, and the Royal Bank’s Rosser Avenue branch acknowledged an issue but deferred comment to a spokesperson in Winnipeg who did not return a call by press time on Wednesday.

Brandon Police Service Sgt. Dallas Lockhart said that the department had not been informed of the debit card skimming.

» tclarke@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB