Zimbabweans Lose Cash Following Cloning Of Bank Electronic Cards

HARARE, June 18, (Xinhua) - Zimbabwean criminals have expanded their activities into card cloning with police warning businesses and private individual to be wary when conducting transactions.

A statement from Criminal Investigations Department spokesperson Portia Chinho to media on Monday said more than 150 cases of card cloning had been reported throughout the country since January.

"For the period January 2018 to date, the division has taken over 154 cases of card cloning.

Out of these, 48 were received during the month of June alone and substantial amounts of cash were lost as a result of these scams," she said.

She added that a number of criminals had since been arrested and taken to court.

"Criminals are taking advantage of the uptake of plastic money by business organizations and members of the public to swindle money through card cloning," she said.

Card cloning involves the production of counterfeit bank debit cards by criminals after fraudulently acquiring bank debit or credit card information contained in the magnetic strip of the bank debit card.

Chinho said the criminals were acquiring bank debit card information through gadgets known as skimmers which were similar to point of sale machines.

"Point of sale machines are a major catalyst and intelligence gathered has pointed out that there is collusion between these cyber criminals and cashiers at shops, liquor outlets and casinos, just to name a few."

Chinho said criminals also stole point of sale machines from shops and service stations for the purpose of uploading data which they used to clone debit cards. GNA