Card Skimmer Found at a Gas Pump at a Big’s Store in Lufkin

Lufkin Police are alerting the public that a card skimmer was found inside a gas pump at a local convenience store.  According to City of Lufkin Communications Director, a card skimmer was found inside pump Number 3 at Big's convenience store located at 1910 North Timberland Drive.

The skimmer was found Wednesday, October 6 by a fuel maintenance technician who was cleaning the pumps. Store employees were unsure of how long the skimmer had been in place. Only that one pump had been compromised by a card skimmer.

If you have recently filled up with fuel at this Big's location, you would be best advised to check with your financial institution to make sure that there are no out of the ordinary charges to your credit or debit card.  Since employees were unsure of how long this skimmer may have been in place, you may want to check back a month or two of your bank statements. You usually won’t know your information has been stolen until you get your statement or an overdraft notice otherwise.

You can be proactive when it comes to trying to avoid a skimmer when you gas up.  Some gas pumps have security seals over the access door of the pump, located near the LED screen.  If that was been broken, report it immediately.  Usually skimmers are used on only one gas pump, so do a sight test with other pumps to make sure there are no differences from one card reader to the next. Try to wiggle the card reader, if it has some give and take, it may have been compromised.  Do not use a PIN number if you are using a debit card, and to be completely safe, pay inside instead of at the pump.