The Real Hustle is a BBC show that describes how criminals, scammers, hustlers, and average tricksters manage to fool everyday people in typical situations.
The three Hustlers — confidence trickster Alexis Conran, scam artist Paul Wilson and ‘sexy swindler’ Jessica Clement — carry out notorious scams on unsuspecting members of the public to reveal how damaging such fraud can be to both businesses and individuals alike.
In one of the show’s segments, the Hustlers show three different methods a waiter or waitress can steal customers’ credit card information, including PIN, right in front of their faces.
In this video, the waitress attaches a small card skimming device to the bottom of her leg, on her waist, and even her apron, and each time she is able to skim the card without the customers realizing what she is doing.
The skimmer records the data encoded on the credit card strip as a waveform, which is later decoded with a computer program.
Updated August 9, 2011 and originally published March 26, 2007. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the RSS feed or receive daily emails. Follow @flexo on Twitter and visit our Facebook page for more updates.
Rank: Platinum
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Are we supposed to be surprised that this can happen? There is a certain level of trust extended every time I had my card to anyone, especially a server that runs off with it to process. Of course, that trust is followed up with consistent reviews of credit and bank statements.
I don’t think there’s a need for surprise, perhaps just aware of these three specific methods that can be used.
Do you really trust every waiter or waitress you hand your card to? Honestly, I don’t think about it that much.
Just 3 of about a million reasons *not* to use a debit card to pay for things.
I always feel iffy about giving them my card and having them disappear for a few minutes with it…I know if I were them, I would be very tempted to write down expiration date, card number, security code…whatever’s on there. Do they reallly need one of those fancy machines??? Or am I just misunderstanding this..?…