Roche Bros. has issued a warning that credit card skimmers were found on self-checkout machines at its Wellesley store and 4 other locations.
Skimmers are illegal devices, sometimes in the form of a fake keypad or card reader attachment, that grab data from credit or debit card magnetic strips that can then be sold on the black market.
Roche Bros. says that skimmers were also found at Sudbury Farms in Sudbury and Needham, Brothers Marketplace in Weston, and Roche Bros. in Natick. An employee first sniffed out the issue at the Sudbury store, where 2 skimmers were found. Upon further investigation at other stores, more skimmers were found and removed.
Mansfield-based Roche Bros. has contacted law enforcement over the incident.
“They contacted us yesterday after an employee discovered what appeared to be a skimming device in the self-checkout area. There was only 1 located and the device looks like the credit/debit card keypads that are used in the store. It was attached over the existing keypad,” according to Wellesley Police Lt. Marie Cleary.
Detectives from the Wellesley Police Department are investigating the incident. Cleary said she checked the police dispatch log and was unable to find any other recent incidents of skimmers in Wellesley. The only thing we found in the Swellesley archives was an incident involving an ATM at Citizen’s Bank in Linden Square back in 2011.
Roche Bros. said in a statement that “Some customers who have shopped at any of these 5 locations on the self-checkouts only on or before Dec. 24, may have been impacted. At this time there has been no confirmation that any customer data has been compromised.” Still, it would be worth checking your card accounts for any unusual activity.
Card skimmers can take different forms: This FBI infographic gives a general idea of what they might look like, though appearances vary depending on the machine they are skimming from.
Please send tips, photos, ideas to theswellesleyreport@gmail.com
Can some photos of these skimmers be posted somewhere so that legal customers can have an idea what a “skimmer” looks-like.
Also, Roche Bros. usually has an employee near the self-check-out area. Why didn’t these employees notice the installation of the skimmers or the existence of the skimmers much sooner?
Finally, there MUST be some video of the self-check-out area, so that the management and the Police can determine when the skimmers were installed and by whom.
Simple and logical. Thank you.
I suspect these were installed after hours, and the fact that there were multiple Roche Brothers involved, I bet they are looking into their after hours vendors.
Is this an “inside” job, perhaps by a Roche’s employee? Who else would have access to these machines?