Victoria police are warning employees of local businesses to remain vigilant after a spate of credit card frauds have been reported in the city since November 2018.
Investigations into these scams that have been occurring throughout the Greater Victoria region are currently ongoing.
In the meantime, officers are advising businesses to be aware of how customers use the credit/debit card or POS terminals.
Employees should make sure that customers are using the terminals to either enter their PIN numbers or utilize the tap feature.
When handed the POS terminal, potential scammers could access administrative menus or manually enter credit card numbers which may belong to stolen cards.
“They manually override the POS terminal and that allows the criminal to put in whatever they want,” Cst. Matt Rutherford told Victoria Buzz.
Rutherford also expressed the need for people to cancel and report stolen credit cards as fast as possible in order to prevent fraudulent activity.
Businesses and employees who notice customers trying to manually enter credit card numbers should cancel the transaction and call VicPD at 250-995-7654 or your local police agency.
If you know who is responsible for these frauds, you call your local police detachment or report what you know anonymously by contacting Greater Victoria Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
