-
A view of the credit card machine at a pump at the Enos Fuel/Lake Way Mart. Courtesy Photo
A number of residents are dealing with extra charges appearing on their bank statements. Some residents claim to have noticed the charges happened after frequented a local gas station; Enos Fuel Stop at 5302 Enos Road. It is also known as Lake Way Mart, and formerly known as Weavers.
The store has been the topic of the fraud activity in question for the past week. Wendell Boggs is a resident who has dealt with the fraudulent charges and took to Facebook to air out his frustrations. He said in his post that shortly after using his card at Lake Way Mart, he had a fraudulent charge of $75 show up on his card. Many other people chimed in to report they recently had the same issue.
Tony Kumar is the manager of Lake Way, and said he heard the complaints and automatically begin to get to the bottom of the problem. Kumar said that he has had technicians come and look at his machines and has even replaced them.
According to Kumar, somebody broke their gas pump and stole the card reader. After that, he replaced all the readers on the pumps. He said that either he or his employees check the card readers every two hours to inspect for any evidence of tampering.
Kumar and customers alike contacted the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office to file complaints.
Marshall County Sheriff Danny Cryer said they went out to investigate, and found pry marks on the gas pumps, which could be an indication that a skimmer was placed on it. However, after further investigation, no skimmers were found on the pumps. Initially, the fraudulent charges were stemming from the gas pumps, but Kumar said after they changed the readers on the gas pumps, it started occurring after in-store purchases. Kumar noted that he began trying everything he could possibly think of to stop his customers from losing money. He even put tape over the slider on the credit card machine and all credit card purchases had to be done with the chip.
Kumar said he has lost many hours of sleep trying to stave off the fraudulent charges that his customers were forced to deal with. “I am not a bad person,” Kumar said, “I always take care of my customers.”
Kumar said he has spent countless hours on the phone, and had ordered extra safety equipment so his customers can shop at his store without the fear of losing money. He ordered new card readers, has hired multiple technicians to check the equipment, and has purchased 12 more cameras to add to his collection of 16. That will make the amount of security cameras at the store almost 30.
Kumar also noted that his store was not the only one in town who was dealing with customers receiving fraudulent charges after purchases with their cards. To his knowledge, Circle K, and Dollar General have been plagued with the same issue.
Cryer has been on top of the investigation and keeping the residents informed via his campaign Facebook page. On June 5, Cryer took to Facebook to update everybody.
“I have been on and off of the phone with the Secret Service all day,” Cryer posted. “They have spoken with the owner and a service tech who inspected all equipment at The Lakeway Fuel Stop across from Gringo’s in Enos.”
“The tech said he found nothing,” Cryer continued. “The Secret Service said that it’s very common to have someone steal data then bundle that information and sell it at a later time on the dark web, he also added that they have seen this several times as of late across the State.”
Cryer also told the residents that he has the personal cell phone number to the agent who is specialty is credit card skimmers. He said he will continue to monitor the situation, and if need be, call the agent for assistance.
Cryer also noted that the agent advised the affected residents to monitor their credit card activity and work with the bank to stop the fraudulent charges, and to let him know if this issue continues.