The police last week arrested and charged another pump attendant in relation to an ongoing scam at several service stations where unscrupulous employees copy and use the credit card of customers for fraudulent transactions.

In the most recent incident, Peta-Gay Garvey, 25, from Grants Pen, St Andrew, was arrested after fraudulent transactions were recorded with two of three credit cards that she reportedly processed while on the job.

Copying device

Police say that Garvey implicated three other employees at that station, including the supervisor, in the scam. Garvey allegedly told police that she was not the one who used the copying device to obtain the owners’ details but her supervisor. That person, and the others, the police say, have since gone into hiding.

The pump attendant will answer to charges of uttering forged documents, obtaining credit by fraud, forgery and conspiracy in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court on April 23. She was previously granted bail after being brought before the gavel last week.

The lawmen theorise that the scam involves unscrupulous pump attendants stealing customers’ credit-card information by swiping them on a copying device before duplicating them on to fictitious or old credit cards. The criminals then max out the fake cards after this is done. Sleuths from the Fraud Squad are seeking two men from Portmore, St Catherine, who they believe are issuing the device to pump attendants at various service stations.

The first arrest was made last month when Fraud Squad detectives picked up Stacy-Ann Brown, 23, from a service station along Half-Way Tree Road.

Investigations in that case showed that a number of customers who had bought petrol using their credit cards at the service station where she worked, complained of noticing transactions being recorded with their information afterwards.

Source: Jamaica Star