Two credit card skimmers were found Tuesday on gas pumps at the Kum & Go store at 1115 141st St. in Perry, often called Kum & Go South.
An officer of the Perry Police Department and a Dallas County Deputy Sheriff discovered one credit card skimmer about 3:30 p.m. and logged the item into evidence, according to police.
About 4:15 p.m. a Kum & Go employee called the Perry Police Department and said a maintenance man found a second skimmer on a second pump.
The skimmers were found on pump #1 and pump #5, according to police, “the northwest and northeast end pumps.”
Law enforcement “had several fraudulent debit card transactions reported on Dec. 18 and Dec. 19, which lead us to believe there might be a skimmer in the area,” said Perry Police Department Chief Eric Vaughn.
He said the thieves used “internal” skimmers to steal customers’ credit card information at the Perry store.
“There’s different types” of skimmers, Vaughn said. “There are some that basically are a device that sits over the reader itself, and there are some where they open the pump themselves and put in a reader so you can’t see it from the outside.”
Vaughn said he did not know how many customers were victimized or the dollar amount of credit card fraud committed prior to the skimmers’ discovery.
“We hadn’t seen anything like that in Perry yet,” Vaughn said, “but they’ve been hitting the metro in the past few months or so and becoming more frequent. We’ve been trying to keep an eye out for them, but with the internal ones you just can’t see them unless you can see that the seals have been broken on the pumps.”
Vaughn said he advises motorists to check their bank accounts for any fraudulent transactions occurring after using the fuel pumps at Kum & Go South. He recommended the public see the GO Banking Rates website for safety tips in protecting yourself from skimming devices.
Vaughn said anyone discovering fraudulent transactions on their credit card accounts should call the Perry Police Department at 515-465-4636.
Can they disclose which pump numbers they were found on and/or a date range? I think this would be helpful to know for people checking their accounts.
The skimmers were found on pump 1 and pump 5, according to police, “the northwest and northeast end pumps.”
Thanks for the pump numbers and locations. I got gas there on Tuesday a couple of hours before they found the first one. So scary! Thankfully, I was on the south side of the end pump. I’ll be paying inside from now on.