A man, who asked that we not identify him, lives in the Rice Military, which is south of The Heights.

He tells us he went to this Valero at Memorial and Birdsall to buy gas.

“Maybe a week later, the bank calls me and tells me there’s fraud on my credit card,” he said.

The card was cancelled and the bank sent him a new one.

“And as an experiment, I took the brand new card and activated it and went to the exact pump at that very same station,” the man said.

Yep, you guessed it.


Two days later, he says the bank calls to report fraud on the new card.

“When I told the clerk this story and I was trying to get him to connect me to the manager, two people in line behind me said the same thing happened to them,” he said.

“This is not something involving just a few people that are putting skimmers on gas pumps,” said HPD Sergeant Jeff Headly. “There’s literally thousands of individuals involved and it’s much more complicated than just putting the skimmers on the pumps.”

Headly says newer pumps are less likely to have skimmers.

He says mechanical key pads are less likely to be skimmed than the membrane-smooth surface keypads.

The sergeant advises consumers to look for gas pumps with card readers with a small green lock lit up next to them.

Of course, the best way to avoid being skimmed is to pay for your gas inside.