The skimmer scammers are at it again, but Market Basket was vigilant.
“Members of our Chelsea store management team found a suspicious device attached to a single payment terminal yesterday at 4:24 PM,” a spokesman retained by the Tewksbury-based Market Basket wrote in a statement Wednesday morning.
The statement added that security camera footage showed the device had been placed on the terminal just six minutes earlier and the store wasn’t sure if any customer data had been compromised.
A skimmer is a device that overlays the credit card machine found anywhere you may use such a card for payment, from grocery store checkouts to gas station pumps. The device records the information on a credit card so thieves can use your card themselves. The skimmer devices look just like the machines they’re placed over, so they’re easy to miss. But if something seems off, try giving the top of the machine a little tug and see if there’s a skimmer.
The Chelsea Police Department wrote that it has the device from their local store and is “working with the Market Basket as well as our regional partners to see if the devices are related to other recent incidents.”
A handful of Market Basket locations, along with some New England locations of WalMart — the largest brick and mortar retailer in the world — were host to a series of skimmer scams in October.
“Be vigilant, especially now going into the holiday season,” Concord, N.H., Police Deputy Chief John Thomas told the Herald last month after his department announced it was investigating after skimmers were found at a self-checkout lane at the Loudon Road Walmart and the Storrs Street Market Basket.
The police department released surveillance footage stills of two alleged flimflam men police say are responsible for several of the skimmer incidents. The photos show men in coats, scally caps and pandemic-style surgical masks.
As for the Chelsea incident, a spokeswoman for Market Basket said that the company had shared security footage with the local police and it will “be up to local law enforcement’s discretion what’s shared.”
The captain in charge of media relations at the Chelsea Police Department was not immediately available for comment.
This is a developing story.
