“The Workers Put It There” — Man Confronts Employees after Finding Credit Card Skimmer at Checkout

A shopper recorded himself finding a skimmer while shopping at a grocery store and posted the footage in a viral TikTok. In his video, a user who goes by Yorkie (@keepityorkie) confronts workers with the fraudulent find, and some viewers saw his clip and believe one of the employees at the store may have had something to do with its placement.

"Hey you guys there's a skimmer on here," the person says at the start of the video as he stands at the checkout line of what appears to be a grocery store.

He places his hands on the contraption and begins to pry it off of the card-reading machine and begins to tear off the face of it.

"You gotta pay for that," a man behind the counter can be heard saying as the TikToker continues to work on the device, prying the purportedly false front right off of the card reader.

"Don't do that," the man behind the counter says while someone else chimes in, "Don't do that, okay?"

"This is a skimmer," the man says showing off the device to the woman behind the counter.

"You see that, you see here?" he says, holding it up again, the people working at the store seem confused.

"It's not broken," he assures them, highlighting that the con device that was placed on top of the legitimate card reader is the problem, not the skimmer that was presumably placed there by someone else who intended to read customers' card data to steal their information and use their cards for unauthorized purchases.

"Yeah, okay? It's a skimmer," he replies again to the folks, laying the product on top of the device in front of the workers as he continues to record their reaction to him prying the front of the device off of the card reader.

The TikToker then explains what a skimmer device is and how it operates, "This is how you take people's money. Get their credit card information," he says to the workers.

"What?" the woman behind the counter says, confused.

"This is how you get people's credit card information the scammer will put this on, people will use their credit card, it will capture their credit card information and that's what happens."

One of the workers suggests that they call the police to report the placement of the skimmer over the machine, indicating that perhaps a third party, or someone other than themselves were responsible for placing the card skimming device on the card reader.

The TikToker goes on to say that since the skimmer is removed, the machine can be used as intended without fear of someone getting their information taken by an unknown source/third party: "So now we can use it and it's fine."

He added further context on the find in a caption for the post, penning: "Credit Card skimmer device found at supermarket Point Of Sale terminal. Be aware before you tap or skim your credit card. Don’t be a victim."

This isn't the first time someone has pointed out that a card skimmer was installed at a convenience store and potentially stole the information of customers who thought that they were just making regular, non-scammy purchases.

In this particular instance that Distractify wrote about previously, the individual in question accused a convenience store worker of installing the card skimmer themselves as a means of robbing customers of their credit card information.

One commenter who responded to Yorkie's video seemed in line with the findings in the above-linked video, writing that employees are often the ones who install credit card skimmers as a means of bolstering their bank accounts on shoppers' dimes: "I worked in Credit Card loss prevention/fraud for years. 99% of the time the employees are responsible for the skimmer being there," they said.

Someone else replied: "Def has to be an inside job. At my job I would 100% know if someone put a skimmer on our machines or not."

While another person wrote that they thought the older woman was oblivious to the skimmer being installed, but thought that the younger employee must've had some knowledge of it.

"the lady knows nothing about it but the guy in blue he knows, next time mention the name of the store so that people can not go there"

Have you ever encountered a credit card skimmer while shopping or been a victim of fraud and believed that it could've been linked to a skimmer?