Lebanese Loop - Other Forms of Card Fraud

Other Forms of Card Fraud

Other variants of fraud may use a “skimming” technique, where an electronic device is fitted over the ATM's card slot and which reads the information encoded into the magnetic strip on the back of the victim's card as it is inserted. This variant does not require the card to be retained; the transaction runs normally, and the data recorded from the original card is copied to another blank magnetic stripe card, which is then used to withdraw cash.

At their most sophisticated, scams can involve the construction and installation of fake fascias built to fit particular ATMs or other card reading devices. These false fronts can house any of the above devices to gather data from the user and allow the perpetrators to acquire or clone cards and their associated PINs. These fakes can often be indistinguishable from unmodified devices to the untrained eye.