Parking machine scam steals credit card details

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LATEST: Tens of thousands of people may have to replace their credit cards after thieves hacked into parking machines at a downtown Auckland carpark.

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The scam came to light when banks realised Auckland City Council's Downtown carpark was a common point of purchase on fraudulent credit card transactions, the New Zealand Herald reported today.

Thieves were believed to have stolen credit card details of thousands of people, although it was not known if they attached skimming machines or accessed the device credit card database internally.

If they had internal access the thieves could be based overseas.

Westpac, which was investigating the fraud, would not reveal the scale of the problem, but said tens of thousands of credit cards may have been compromised and may need to be replaced.

The fraud may have started years ago but had only been detected in the last few weeks.

The council's finance general manager Andrew McKenzie said the council had stopped accepting payment through the machine credit card facilities at the three carparks. People could still pay by credit card at the cashiers' booths.

The bank had told the council of the problem but had asked the council to keep the matter quiet while it investigated, Mr McKenzie said.

Wellington City Council is undertaking a review of parking pay and display machines in light of the scam in Auckland.

Spokesman Richard MacLean said they had not noticed any trends or received any notification from banks that Wellington had been affected but had asked the contractors to give their machines a "once over lightly" to ensure there was no problem.

- NZPA