NEW YORK—The New York Police Department is testing a new device that officials hope will turn the tide in the war against credit card skimmers.
Police have been trying out the Skim Reaper around the city since February, and believe that the $50 gadget could help spell the end of a crime that, according to the Secret Service, rakes in more than a billion dollars each year nationwide, the New York Post reported.
As CUToday.info has extensively reported, card skimming has taken off in the last two years as crooks turn to new fraud avenues as EMV takes hold in the U.S.
The Post said users insert the Skim Reaper, comparable in size to a long credit card, into a card reader, and a display screen reads "possible skimmer" whenever one of the nefarious devices is detected, the Post said.
Such a tool would be very beneficial to credit unions as they perform their regular inspections of ATMs, which now often have shimmers inserted by crooks—thin card skimmers placed inside ATMs that are not detectable by a typical visual inspection.