A popular gas station on the Peninsula may be the target of credit card skimmers once again.
This is concerning to customers that frequent the 76 on El Camino Real in San Mateo near Hillsdale Shopping Center.
According to the National Association of Convenience Stores, each pump should have a unique serial number on it. If it doesn’t have one, or if the strip is voided, then it means the machine may have been tampered with.
An observant customer noticed that is the case at the 76. A couple of the pumps don’t have serial numbers at all.
And one says void on it–out of eight pumps. This gas station was the target of scammers early last year.
At the time, police said the culprits put card skimmers inside the pumps as opposed to where you slide your credit card. That makes it a lot harder to detect, so it went on for weeks before an employee noticed the tampering.
KRON4 spoke to customers there. A couple of them had heard about potential skimmers in the machines. Others hadn’t.
KRON4 tried to reach the managers of the gas station, but haven’t heard back from them at all. So, we can’t definitively say there is a skimmer in any of these machines.
KRON4 also reached out to the San Mateo Police Department, they tell us until someone reports fraudulent activity, they don’t generally get involved.
Customers tell KRON4 they are concerned this could be happening again.
“Really scary to think someone could take your information just that easy,” customer Theresa Richardson said. “And ever since I heard about, I jiggle the thing to makes sure that it doesn’t come loose, so I’m very skeptical. I’ve been using cash a lot because I don’t trust it.”
“It does concern me,” another customer Trish Bailey said. “We use it probably every other week and have been doing so now for years. So, I was unaware this was happening. I heard about issues in the past. Very uncomfortable because I thought that it had been resolved. Quit going into the station to pay at the pump, so that is disturbing.”
KRON4 can’t be certain that there are skimmers in any of the machines there. But there’s some evidence that suggests so.
And until the owners tell KRON4 that is not the case, it’s worth being extra careful if you get your gas there.