First National Bank (FNB) says its efforts have helped lead to the arrest of 11 suspects in connection with a card-skimming scam that allegedly defrauded customers of thousands of rands.
The suspects are believed to have been operating from an Internet caf'e in Malvern, Johannesburg, and were arrested after a member of the public went to FNB with information about the scam.
FNB says at the time of the arrests, the gang was downloading a skimmer onto a PC and the investigators found card information issued by various local and international banks.
According to Jan Kruger from FNB`s Group Forensic Department, the alleged `kingpin` of the gang had several runners working for him. "A runner could target a restaurant, for example, by getting waiters to skim cards through a small card-skimmer," he says.
A few days later, the runner would return the skimmer to the kingpin, and he would download the magstripe information onto a computer at the Malvern Internet caf'e. The information was then sent overseas.
Kruger says the targeted restaurants were changed on a weekly basis so there was no pattern for investigators to pick up on. This could have potentially allowed the scam to operate for a long time, he says.
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