A local businessman is wanting to warn other Williams Lake store owners of the latest scam used by would-be thieves.
The owner, who wishes to remain anonymous to protect their store, said a suspect entered their Williams Lake business this week and attempted to override their Moneris machine, which processes debit and credit card payments at the till.
He said in this case, the suspect pretended to insert a credit card to pay for items and instead of just keying in the four-digit passcode for card, they distracted the teller and manually entered the 12-digit card number and code on the back of the card. In doing this, he believes the suspect was trying to avoid entering the passcode of the card (which they wouldn’t have if the card was stolen), and instead pass the purchase off as a phone order.
Fortunately in this case, the business had the latest Moneris with security updates and it did not allow the purchase without the store’s own passcode being entered, which alerted the teller to the scam.
He worries, however, that not all stores have the latest processors, or that in smaller businesses a teller could be distracted and the numbers entered, in which case the store would have to absorb the loss.
