Customer debit PINs swiped from West Van mall

Police are warning everyone who shopped at West Vancouver's Park Royal Shopping Centre in the last six months to change their debit card PIN code after at least 200 customers were victimized by debit fraud at four local businesses.

Thieves secretly replaced a number of Interac PIN pads at mall shops, sometime between mid-April and early June, with devices rigged to record customer security codes and card numbers, West Vancouver Cpl. Fred Harding said today.

A few weeks later, police suspect the crooks returned to swap back the original devices, then retrieved the stored data from the doctored ones and used it to create counterfeit cards. Customers and retailers were none the wiser - store transactions continued as normal and the original debit cards still worked, Harding said.

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But around mid-July, police started getting complaints bank accounts were being drained through withdrawals identified as coming from various Montreal banks.

"Since then, we've been flooded," Harding said, adding a "substantial amount" of money has been stolen so far.

"These are the ones that we know about," Harding warned. "It's entirely possible that there are these PIN pads out there right now."

Harding would not release the names of the four retailers identified so far out of about 280 stores at Park Royal, saying police don't identify victims.

At this point, Harding said banks are footing the bill and victims are being reimbursed.

Harding said a multi-jurisdictional criminal investigation has been launched involving police in British Columbia and Quebec.

The incident is just one of a growing number of so-called "skimming" frauds, in which hidden equipment is installed to obtain your PIN and card data, which is then encoded onto a counterfeit card.

In June, Vancouver police uncovered a similar skimming scheme, and arrested four alleged members of an Eastern European crime group - Zoran Vulanovic, Boris Kovac, Lana Lancar, and a man who gave police the fake name Domenico Mingrone.

Vulanovic and Mingrone later failed to appear in court.

Harding said the sophistication of PIN pad swaps means the similar incidents are likely related, although no link has been confirmed.

"This is a distinctive modus operandi," Harding said. "It would appear to be a central ring."

Skimming was responsible for $94.6 million in fraud across Canada last year, said Interac Association spokeswoman Tina Romano. In 2005, that number was $70.4 million, and in 2004, $60 million.

"It continues to grow over the years, but it's important to note that of the four billion transactions that go through the Interac network, 99.99 per cent go through problem free," Romano said.

Customers are protected under a debit card code of practice and should be fully reimbursed for their losses, she said. As a response to the rising incidences of fraud, Interac will begin experimenting this fall with adding microchips to debit cards, making them harder to duplicate, Romano said.

Retail B.C. spokeswoman Sonja Kennedy said the public and retailers need to be aware of the growing problem of debit fraud.

"This is something that's newer, but it's actually one of those crimes that's easy to guard against," she said.

Kennedy urged businesses to use a unique sticker to identify their PIN pads. For consumers, she said the best way to avoid fraud is to use cash and pressure retailers to increase debit security.

Park Royal property manager Brian Maule said today he wasn't aware of any recent fraud incidences in the mall, but said guarding against fraud is the responsibility of individual retailers and consumers.

crolfsen@png.canwest.com