Hundreds of car owners in Lincolnshire in the east Midlands became victims of the scam last week after they filled fuel from a petrol station in the county.
This is the latest in a series of credit card scams across Britain in which card details are recorded by hidden cameras while making payment for fuel at petrol stations and then sent across to foreign locations where they are used to withdraw money.
Several British people have reported instances of money being withdrawn from their accounts in India, Philippines, Australia and Canada.
In Britain, most banks have introduced a “chip and pin” system for transactions in shops using credit and debit cards. This means that for every purchase, apart from the card, the customer also needs to punch in an exclusive pin number. Signing for purchases using cards has been virtually phased out to prevent card frauds. In the petrol station in Lincolnshire, the police found a hole drilled in the ceiling above the chip and pin machine.
It is believed that a camera placed there filmed customers keying in their numbers.
The fraudsters then produced replica credit cards that they sent to associates around the world. Within hours of customers using their credit cards to make payments, the replica cards were being used fraudulently in locations such as India and Dubai.
More than 200 motorists have had hundreds of pounds taken from their bank accounts.
In December, a similar scam was reported from the Houghton-on-the-Hill in Leicestershire.
In April last year, Buckinghamshire residents  complained that money had been withdrawn from their accounts from ATMs in Mumbai and other places in India.

LTTE ROLE DOUBTED


A British MP has said supporters of LTTE could be behind the credit card cloning scam to raise funds for the rebels waging a war for a separate state in Sri Lanka.
“It has been suggested to me that some of the money may have found its way to the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka possibly to fund,” Conservative Party MP Andrew Selous told the House of Commons.
Selous said Canadian police had confirmed that two Londoners and their two Canadian accomplices were arrested in early February with thousands of skimmed British credit card in Toronto.