Possible credit card scam

argolis

A co-worker (CW) was in London recently and while paying in a restaurant, CW was handed the terminal to enter his PIN at the table. CW only looked at the receipt on the way out the door to realise that the waiter never pressed "enter" on the amount and, without noticing, CW had entered his PIN into the amount, pressed "enter" and handed it back to the waiter.

This would have resulted in a transaction for hundreds of thousands (four digits added onto the price!), but the waiter had cancelled the transaction and didn't say anything further, leaving CW to head away. CW felt there was something weird about the interaction and checked the receipt outside. When he saw the amount, he realised his PIN was on it and he went back inside, into the kitchens to find the waiter and demanded the merchant copy of the receipt. The waiter handed it over to him but didn't ask to repeat the payment correctly, so CW got the meal for free.

Looking at the merchant receipt, this waiter would have the full credit card number, start/expiry date, and now the PIN (the last four digits of the amount).

It seems like if the waiter was honest, he would have asked CW to pay correctly for the meal but he let him away. In the first place, I think he would have had to confirm or cancel the transaction while holding the terminal at the table.

We're not 100% sure it's a scam but CW feels like it was. Has any encountered this before?

bluetractor

Quite an easy error to make. But for an error of hundreds of thousands you'd have to have a credit limit of hundreds of thousands. And even if the amount for just a few thousand there is a mechanism to do a chargeback and have an error corrected.
On the possibility of card fraud. the waiter would have to either claim you did a runner (cctv would be checked) or would have to stump up the meal cost. Restaurants are busy places and staff are under pressure and errors are made. I'll put it down to a simple keying error.

Shelflife

If it was a fraud attempt the waiter would have been happy to pay the meal cost as he would have been able to skim way more than that later.

daheff

i'd be changing my card pin.

question though, how did the CW get a receipt if no pin was entered?

Merchant copy wouldnt process if no pin?

Credit Checker Moose

It sounds like the pin was entered twice.

Wheety

Shelflife wrote: »

If it was a fraud attempt the waiter would have been happy to pay the meal cost as he would have been able to skim way more than that later.

When would he have copied the card? The CC number would not be on the merchant's copy.

HeidiHeidi

Looking at the merchant receipt, this waiter would have the full credit card number, start/expiry date, and now the PIN (the last four digits of the amount).

This was in the OP - does the full credit card number appear on a merchant receipt?

Atlantic Dawn

Unless their PIN number is the same as the last 4 digits of their credit card there's no way it would feature on the receipt even merchant copy.

HeidiHeidi

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Unless their PIN number is the same as the last 4 digits of their credit card there's no way it would feature on the receipt even merchant copy.

From my reading of it, the customer had entered his PIN as the tip, so it may have appeared on the receipt (I've never seen a merchant copy, so guessing here).


OP, it's fairly standard in my experience that restaurants and other places where you might tip hand you the credit card machine, and it's set up that you enter a tip (or skip that step if you don't want to tip), then do your PIN. Sounds like that's what happened here.



So it may not have been a scam - but it does sound strange that the transaction was cancelled and nothing further done. Unless the waiter wasn't used to the machine and fecked up?


Did you actually see the merchant copy receipt with full CC number, expiry date and PIN (as the tip amount) shown?



If so, then that system is ripe for scamming alright.

bluetractor

as per heidiheidi, this is more than likely what happened. I forgot that restaurants hand the machine over with tip option showing before total is shown, so totally normal and plausible and simply your work colleague did not look at what he/she was doing.

Your colleague needs a visit to specsavers

argolis

daheff wrote: »

i'd be changing my card pin.

question though, how did the CW get a receipt if no pin was entered?

Merchant copy wouldnt process if no pin?

The waiter cancelled the transaction at the table and gave him a "cancelled" receipt and sent him on his way. Unless a "cancelled" receipt prints automatically and the waiter didn't notice, it would seem like he deliberately gave him a dud receipt in the hopes that CW would just throw it away thinking he'd paid.

For full effect, now that the waiter has his CC number, expiry and PIN, he could probably put through the legit cost of the meal before going on to make a bunch of fraudlent transactions on it. I presumed that he/they have a card encoding machine with a bunch of credit card blanks that they can manually put the details onto.

argolis

Mr.S wrote: »

Merchant copy also contains **** as CC digits apart from the last 4 doesn't it?

He still has the merchant copy and his own customer copy. The merchant copy has the full 16 digit credit card number, the start and expiry dates and the PIN written into the amount field. For full scamming, if the waiter was handling the card to put into the terminal, he could probably flip it over and read the CCV number as well to jot onto the receipt afterwards.

argolis

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

From my reading of it, the customer had entered his PIN as the tip, so it may have appeared on the receipt (I've never seen a merchant copy, so guessing here).


OP, it's fairly standard in my experience that restaurants and other places where you might tip hand you the credit card machine, and it's set up that you enter a tip (or skip that step if you don't want to tip), then do your PIN. Sounds like that's what happened here.



So it may not have been a scam - but it does sound strange that the transaction was cancelled and nothing further done. Unless the waiter wasn't used to the machine and fecked up?


Did you actually see the merchant copy receipt with full CC number, expiry date and PIN (as the tip amount) shown?



If so, then that system is ripe for scamming alright.

Yeah he still has both receipts, I might see if I can post up a redacted copy. Let's say the price of the meal was £60.00. The merchants copy has:

Full credit card number: 1234 5678 9876 5432
Start 01/18
Expiry 12/22
Amount: 600,012.34

The transaction's obviously not gonna go through because the credit wouldn't be there. The trick is in having all the details to be able to clone the card at a later stage, having all the details!

GerardKeating

Mr.S wrote: »

Merchant copy also contains **** as CC digits apart from the last 4 doesn't it?

Wheety wrote: »

When would he have copied the card? The CC number would not be on the merchant's copy.

the Full card number can appear on the Merchant Copy, but then the merchant needs full PCI complaiance for the resturant and the storage of the receipts, most don't bother with that hassle.

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Unless their PIN number is the same as the last 4 digits of their credit card there's no way it would feature on the receipt even merchant copy.

in Cases like this, the PIN is appended to the end of the transaction amount.

argolis wrote: »

The transaction's obviously not gonna go through because the credit wouldn't be there. The trick is in having all the details to be able to clone the card at a later stage, having all the details!

Actually I have seen a few (admittly rare) cases where the transaction did go through, and the irate customer returning to the store a little later.