NORMAN, Okla. – Jamie Wright used a check to withdraw $40 from her Norman bank Wednesday morning.
She had to cut up her ATM card after someone fraudulently used her information.
“My bank called me 8 Saturday night, said ‘Have you been to Penn Square Mall today?’ I said, ‘No, ma’am, I have not,’” Wright said.
Wright’s card was used at three different Penn Square Mall ATMs.
“$503, $503 and $203 and $6 in ATM fees,” Wright said.
Wright’s downtown Norman Arvest Bank branch is one of four locations in Norman where police have recently found skimmers.
“It goes in the ATM this way, it inserts. So, you’re sliding your magnetic strip over this area which is, you have your reader on the backside of that,” said Norman Police Detective Brady Neal.
Neal calls it a next generation skimmer.
It’s wafer thin and undetectable to a victim.
“These now are the deep insert skimmers that, you’re blind to it. You can’t see it. You don’t know it’s there,” Neal said.
Neal said the skimmer contains an antenna which transmits your card information to a tiny camera hidden somewhere outside the ATM.
The camera then records your pin number as you type it in.
“Best thing you can do is cover that pin as you’re entering it because they have to have those four digits to use your card data,” Neal said.
“I thought that was if someone was behind me. I didn’t know there might be a little camera above me shooting down. I had no clue,” Wright said.
Wright said she’ll steer clear of using ATMs for now.
And, she hopes police catch the person who took her money.
“That was my money, and some thief’s out there enjoying it. And, I hope he enjoys it right to jail,” Wright said.
The skimmers were found at three other different banks, but Norman police are not releasing the names of those locations right now.
Arvest Bank officials tell us they are working with detectives to catch the criminals.
And, Arvest Bank gives any victim of fraud “provisional” cash while the charges are being disputed so customers don’t have to inconvenienced by the crime.
