Durbanite Samantha Mitchell was horrified to see that her Standard Bank petrol card statement reflected expenditure of R14 000 between June 21 and July 15, despite the fact that her account was subject to a R1 000 limit.
Eighty-four transactions had been processed at seven service stations in Durban, of which 82 were fraudulent. The same service station had been used up to seven times in one day, filling a variety of cars boasting a motley assortment of false number plates. A range of signatures, none of them bearing any semblance to the original on Mitchell’s card, appeared on the slips.
The most common problem with petrol cards is when attendants swipe the client’s card through two bank machines. One transaction is processed instantly, and a second an hour or two later. But Mitchell hadn’t been anywhere near the service stations involved and she had not lost her card at any time. Because none of the transactions were processed manually, the reasonable conclusion is that someone has a duplicate version of her card.
Erik Larsen of Standard Bank says that while card-skimming is a problem with credit cards, his organisation has never come across it with petrol cards. The petrol attendant would need to have a card duplicating device handy to copy the cards while the clients waited in their cars. The information from the skimmer would then have to be downloaded on to a PC for transfer to the magnetic strip on a blank card.
There is, of course, the possibility of an employee being involved in card duplications at the bank. The initial transaction in this case took place on the first day of a new statement month and the fraud continued for three weeks without the card being frozen, even though the limit had been exceeded by R13 000, which gives food for thought.
Standard Bank reversed the charges and launched an investigation.