"Card Trapping" the Latest Rage with the Bad Guys

Fraudsters trying to capture bank cards at machines



Jeremy Kirk

22.10.2009 kl 10:51 | IDG News Service



If your cash card gets eaten by the automated-teller machine, it may not end up in the hands of a bank employee.

European financial institutions are seeing a sharp rise in card "trapping," where criminals use various tricks in order to capture and retrieve a person's ATM card for fraudulent use.

For the first half of this year, financial institutions reported 1,045 trapping incidents, according to a new report from the European ATM Security Team (EAST), a nonprofit group composed of financial institutions and law enforcement. The figure, which covers 20 countries within the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), represents a 640 percent increase over the first half of 2008.

"For the first time, we've seen a significant spike in the number of card-trapping incidents," said Lachlan Gunn, EAST's coordinator. "It's a new trend."



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