Card fraudsters prey on high class diners

Plastic card fraud has jumped by more than 50% over the past two years to £430m, banks said yesterday, warning that 'skimming' has reached epidemic levels, particularly in the London area.

Skimming - the copying of a card's black magnetic strip - barely existed five years ago but netted £161m for criminal gangs in the year to August 2002, according to the Association for Payment Clearing Services.

A third of that was taken from card users in London, with fraudsters targeting high class restaurants in the capital. Second worst hit was Birmingham, where losses from skimming were £6.6m.

An unscrupulous restaurant waiter processes a transaction but then, out of sight of the customers, separately records the card's data on tiny devices that can be fitted on to a trouser belt. He or she then sells the data to criminal gangs who use it to mass produce counterfeit credit and debit cards.

Card holders are often unaware of the fraud until a bank statement arrives detailing purchases they did not make.

In the latest twist, fraudsters have begun attaching fake swipe machines to the doors of bank ATM lobbies used by customers to gain entry at evenings or weekends. The fake swipe devices are removed later, containing thousands of customers' details.

Apacs said yesterday that it hopes to beat the fraudsters with a dual strategy of pin numbers, first introduced in France more than a decade ago, and 'smart card' technology.

Customers paying by card will no longer have to sign receipts at shop tills but will instead type a four-digit pin number into a keypad.

Introduction of the system, expected to cost more than £1bn to implement, will begin in Britain next year and will eventually include all 600,000 retail outlets authorised to take cards. "It will mean that by 2005 the vast majority of face-to-face credit and debit card transactions in the UK will be authorised by the customer keying in a pin rather than signing their name," said an Apacs spokeswoman.

Britain's 100m card holders will also be issued with new-style cards containing computer chips. These will be more difficult to copy than traditional cards.

To avoid fraudsters targeting overseas markets instead, Mastercard and Visa are co-ordinating an international roll-out of chip and pin cards. By the end of 2005 these will have replaced the one billion-plus plastic cards currently in issue.

High-profile skimming victims include MP Ann Widdecombe. Last year Barclaycard staff became suspicious about £2,500 spent in a single day at a pub in west London. It is thought her card was cloned and used for 42 false transactions over a 10-day period.

Police have opened a dedicated unit to combat card skimming, and recently swooped on a warehouse in Tottenham, north London, arresting a Turkish-led gang operating card skimming and copying equipment capable of counterfeiting hundreds of thousands of cards.

As Christmas approaches, Apacs yesterday issued a warning to consumers to remain vigilant. It recommends that shoppers should never let their card out of their sight when making a transaction, and should not carelessly discard receipts.