Accounts were cleared in an international scam, which operated through a single card-cloning device in a sleepy village petrol station.
A garage worker has been sentenced by a Leicestershire court for running a secret card scam from a village petrol station.
Abdul Samad Mohamad Raik, working from a Jet outlet in the village of Houghton-on-the-Hill was found by police to have stolen the card details of customers, and to have used them to clear hundreds of bank accounts. The scam, which continued for three months until Mr Raik gave up his job in late 2007, was run through a counterfeit card reader - which secretly copied card numbers.
A total of £175,000 ($350,000) was stolen, with cash withdrawals made from countries including India, Canada and the Philippines. Mr Raik eventually gave himself up to police earlier this year - with the unexplained losses of money the talk of the village's 1,500 residents.
Jailing the worker for two years and nine months, recorder Duncan Smith at Leicester Crown Court said that Mr Raik had betrayed the petrol station's owner, Jim Funnell. "It was a gross breach of trust to your employer, who relies on the good faith of his staff and on the custom his customers bring him," he said.
"It was a huge fraud. One doesn't know how badly his business will be affected or if some people will choose to go elsewhere for their petrol."
