More and more lately, it feels like you can’t go anywhere or do anything without worrying about getting scammed. This is particularly true for older people with less tech savvy who are more susceptible to online scams, but some IRL scams like credit-card skimming can catch everyone unaware if they don’t know what to look for. As a result, one California-based man has made it his life’s mission to find and call out every instance of credit card skimming, confronting the store owners in person and recording their responses.


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Credit card skimming in these situations involves a skimmer add-on being installed on top of the card reader that looks almost identical to the actual pin pad. Instead of processing your payment, however, the skimmer allows scammers to store and later recover your credit card information, which they can then use to buy trips to Dubai or luxury goods or whatever it is scammers buy with stolen money these days. (Bitcoin?)


In a particularly egregious video, the scambuster who calls himself Mr. Pete found a credit card skimmer being used for the second time at a store in San Diego, prompting him to point it out to the cashier, telling him, “You know you have a skimmer, right? You know what this is, right? This is illegal.” The man responds by immediately pulling his phone out and playing dumb, going so far as to offer to call the police despite pretending to not know what it is. He also calls out to his colleague and lets her know about the skimmer, to which she responds, “Again?!”


Based on his response and how quickly he snatched the skimmer up and offered to call the police, commenters aren’t remotely convinced that he doesn’t know what it is or what it does, and the colleague’s response of “Again?!” confirms as much.




Mr. Pete has several videos like this, including one where he finds a skimmer installed at a 7-Eleven in L.A. and another where he finds one installed at a 7-Eleven in San Diego, but none where store employees respond as strangely as the first guy.


He also has videos where he points out exactly what people should look for, but for anyone concerned, tapping to pay is a safer method to use when unsure about whether a skimmer may or may not be installed. To be completely safe, maybe we should all return to paying with cash, particularly when visiting 7-Eleven — either it’s confirmation bias or 7-Eleven’s are a prime target for skimmer scammers.