Rhon­dor Dowlat

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Cus­tomers lost over $98 mil­lion due to fraud­u­lent trans­ac­tions by scam­mers last year and mil­lions have al­so again been fleeced so far this year, of­fi­cers from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice said yes­ter­day.

Not­ing this ac­tiv­i­ty, Fraud Squad of­fi­cers warned the pub­lic of a new deb­it/cred­it card scam called “shim­ming.”

This new ad­vanced de­vice al­lows fraud­sters to tar­get the new EMV chip-card tech­nol­o­gy be­ing giv­en to cus­tomers by fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions through­out T&T.

Speak­ing at the TTPS week­ly me­dia brief­ing, Act­ing Cor­po­ral Ter­rence Now­butt said fraud­sters are coun­ter­act­ing every new tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ment.

“This is sup­posed to help fur­ther se­cure the fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion which is con­tained be­yond the mag­net­ic strip of the card. You may ask if an EMV card is re­al­ly safe. We all know how tech­nol­o­gy works but every ad­vance­ment, it’s the fraud­sters job to coun­ter­act that,” Now­butt said.

“So, they would al­ways look for a way to coun­ter­at­tack any ad­vance­ment in tech­nol­o­gy for se­cu­ri­ty.”

Now­butt said EMV cards pre­sent­ed a ma­jor im­prove­ment in the se­cu­ri­ty of point-of-sale trans­ac­tions, as fraud­sters can­not clone these chips. How­ev­er, he said they have now de­signed or are util­is­ing a method by which they would en­gage in some­thing called “card shim­ming.”

He said a card shim­mer is a de­vice de­signed to il­le­gal­ly cap­ture da­ta stored in the mi­crochip im­plant­ed in the EMV deb­it and cred­it cards.

“The shim­mers are very thin, tiny de­vices that can be fit­ted in­to a card ter­mi­nal and can read EMV mi­crochip da­ta much in the same way that skim­mers can read mag­net­ic stripes,” Now­butt said.

“They have de­signed tech­nol­o­gy that can now cap­ture the da­ta from the mag­net­ic stripe. Fraud­sters can’t ful­ly clone these chip cards though. How­ev­er, the en­cod­ed users’ in­for­ma­tion from that chip can be ob­tained by them us­ing this in­for­ma­tion, they then en­code it on the mag­net­ic stripe of a card so they would now cre­ate a coun­ter­feit EMV chip card that the chip would not be able to work. How­ev­er, the in­for­ma­tion on the strip will be able to use, so the fraud­sters will now go to any re­tail­er which al­lows mag­net­ic strip card use and try to use this card, so it’s cru­cial for re­tail­ers, mer­chants to look out for this.”

Now­butt warned busi­ness­es not to al­low the use of dam­aged cards and con­tact the bank, po­lice at 800-TIPS, 555 and give in­for­ma­tion when any­one comes in with a faulty card.

He al­so warned of E-Skim­ming be­ing on the rise. This al­so in­volves EMV cards and is con­sid­ered a ma­jor cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty con­cern for fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, their ven­dors and any com­pa­ny that process­es pay­ments in­for­ma­tion on their be­half.

“These skim­mers dri­ve cus­tomers to a do­main con­trolled by a fraud­ster that looks and feels like a le­git­i­mate check­out page. So, I re­fer to those well-known on­line shop­ping web­sites. In some in­stances, the fraud­ster will redi­rect you to a page that seems sim­i­lar to that known on­line shop­ping web­site. Up­on check­out, af­ter you have en­tered your card in­for­ma­tion, it will be stolen be­cause the in­for­ma­tion that you en­tered on those pages are every­thing that they need—your name, your ad­dress, the ex­piry date and CVV num­ber. They will then take this in­for­ma­tion and make pur­chas­es of their own or sell the in­for­ma­tion to a third par­ty,” Now­butt said.

In­spec­tor Tri­cia Smith dis­closed that 1,189 re­ports were made to the Fraud Squad in 2022.

“In­ter­est­ing­ly, an es­ti­mat­ed TT$98 mil­lion. We would have had US$584,809.03, and EU$ 49,994.82. The at­tempts (un­suc­cess­ful) $41,237 where 59 per­sons were charged dur­ing this pe­ri­od, in­clud­ing fraud­u­lent cheques to pur­chase goods and ser­vices—man­agers and com­pa­ny cheques—the TT dol­lar val­ue was over $5 mil­lion. On­line fraud $10 mil­lion, with 44 re­ports be­ing made. In in­vest­ment fraud, $27 mil­lion, which there’s a de­crease in 2023 with on­ly five re­ports (of in­vest­ment fraud) amount­ing to $187,600 val­ue,” Smith said.

“In ve­hi­cle fraud there were 76 re­ports—$7,267,497.67. Ro­mance fraud, there were 39 re­ports, over $2,342,138.30 but a de­crease this year with on­ly sev­en so far amount­ing to $350,302.29. In 2023, up to May 31, there were 424 re­ports $25,936,517.81; US$750,041 and at­tempts TT$1,163,100. We have closed 150 re­ports, 55 charges thus far with 32 per­sons be­ing charged,” she added.

Smith al­so re­vealed the lat­est crime trends in 2023 to be on­line fraud.

“This is with us again and it in­cludes ac­count takeovers, pass­word re­sets and fraud­u­lent on­line trans­ac­tions,” she said.

Smith ad­vised cus­tomers to al­ways se­cure per­son­al pass­words and pins and nev­er dis­close them.

Al­so recog­nis­ing loan fraud, Smith said fraud­u­lent doc­u­ments were be­ing used to se­cure loans. She said they have had 26 such re­ports for this year to the tune of TT$3,537,868.38.

Prop­er­ty or land fraud, with per­sons us­ing fake deeds or im­per­son­at­ing the re­al own­er, al­so drew 35 re­ports amount­ing to $9,874,283.36, an in­crease from last year’s fig­ure of TT$4,459,525. The re­ports in­clude fraud­u­lent com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cates, Town and Coun­try and per­mis­sions to oc­cu­py state land.

With re­spect to ve­hi­cle fraud, Smith dis­closed that 54 re­ports were made with a mon­e­tary val­ue of $3,303,350.

“Per­sons pos­ing as cus­toms of­fi­cers and port work­ers and claim­ing there are op­tions at the port where ve­hi­cles are sold and is­su­ing BIR re­ceipts (fake) and dis­hon­est car deal­ers, for­eign used, who ac­cept pay­ment for ve­hi­cles that nev­er ar­rive,” she said of the trend in that area.