A 19-year-old cashier at a gas station in Couva has been granted $100,000 bail after being charged for skimming electronic account information from customers’ ATM and credit cards.
Jade John, of Roystonia, Couva, was granted bail by Justice of the Peace Steven Young after being charged with possession of card skimming equipment on Tuesday.
John was ordered to make her first virtual court appearance before a Port-of-Spain magistrate on July 5.
According to reports, John was arrested on Monday as officers of the Fraud Squad raided a United Independent Petroleum Marketing Company Limited (Unipet) gas station located along the Southern Main Road in Couva.
While searching the cashier’s booth, the officers, who had received information about the fraudulent activity, allegedly found a small, handheld magnetic card stripe reader capable of reading and recording electronic account information.
The officers also secured CCTV footage from the gas station, which allegedly showed John recording customers’ personal identification numbers (PINs) after scanning their cards.
Police are said to be investigating if John had accomplices as they believed that the data captured by the machine would be used by others to create counterfeit cards.
The cards would then be used in conjunction with the corresponding PINs to access the victims’ accounts.