Credit card skimmer hidden inside Canmore gas pump

Some gas station customers in Canmore got hosed at the pump recently — and not from high gas prices.

Criminals hid a device inside one of the fuel dispensers at a Canmore service station to capture credit card information from customers who paid for their fill-ups at the pump.

While bank machines and debit card keypads are common targets for crooks planting so-called skimming devices, veteran investigators say it’s rare to find one inside a gas pump.

"As far as I know, this is the first time we’ve seen this in Alberta," said Sgt. Patrick Webb, regional spokesman for the RCMP.

In Calgary, one longtime commercial crime investigator could think of only one similar case, which involved a skimming device hidden behind a fake faceplate put over top a gas pump.

"The bad guys are always probing for the weakest link, and developing the technology to exploit whatever that weakest link is," said Det. Colin Harper.

Skimming operations use account information stolen from the magnetic strips of debit and credit cards to manufacture counterfeits, which can then be used to make unauthorized purchases and withdrawals.

In the Canmore operation, the culprits managed to open one of the pumps to connect the skimming device while the station was closed, and also removed it without detection.

The case came to light a week ago, when a financial institution called the gas station after noticing a series of suspicious transactions involving credit cards that had been used there.

When staff at the service station inspected the pumps, they found evidence the wiring inside one of them had been tampered with, Webb said.

It’s not known how long the device was inside the pump, but Webb said it was designed to steal data only from credit cards by reading the information from their magnetic strips.

Stealing debit card data is more difficult because it also requires some way of capturing the personal identification numbers entered by customers.

The Canadian Bankers Association said credit card fraud in Canada totalled $358 million last year — with counterfeit cards accounting for almost half that total.

Debit card fraud also costs financial institutions millions of dollars. In 2009, Canadian banks reimbursed $142.3 million stolen from customers’ accounts, according to the Interac Association, the network for debit card and bank machine transactions in Canada.

The latest security measure designed to fight payment card fraud is the introduction of cards with an embedded microchip that prevents them from being counterfeited.

But chip cards — and the equipment needed to read them — are still being introduced, Harper said, so there are plenty of opportunities for skimmers until the old technology is completely phased out in Canada by 2016.

"The bad guys are trying to get in under the wire, and we’ve got a couple of more years to go," he said.