CHIP-AND-PIN systems introduced to foil credit and debit-card fraudsters are making it easier to commit certain types of financial crime, a reformed con man warned last week.

Frank Abagnale, whose life story inspired the Leonardo DiCaprio film Catch Me If You Can, served five years for fraud after posing as an airline pilot, a doctor and a lawyer and cashing $2.5m (£1.3m) of fraudulent cheques between the ages of 16 and 21.

Now 58, he has used his skills to help the FBI fight fraud for the past 30 years and also works with CIMS, which offers identity-fraud protection services.

He does not believe that chip-and-pin technology, which requires transactions to be verified with a four-digit number rather than a signature, will prove much of a challenge for professional fraudsters.

The information sent out by the hand-held card reading devices used in restaurants is not encrypted, for example. Any criminals nearby with an information receiver can therefore capture the data, including the pin entered — actually making it easier for them to commit certain types of fraud.

Abagnale said: “Anyone sitting at another table with a laptop would be able to pick up the messages being sent to and from the card readers.”

His concerns about the vulnerability of chip-and-pin were reinforced last week by news that 600 Shell petrol stations have suspended use of chip-and-pin terminals after more than £1m was stolen from customers’ accounts. Fraudsters masquerading as engineers sent to test the equipment instead fitted the keypads with memory chips that logged customers’ card numbers and pin codes.

They then used the information to plunder accounts by making counterfeit cards and using them to withdraw cash from cash machines. Fraudsters were only able to clone the cards’ magnetic strips, rather than the chips, but many ATMs are not yet fitted with chip readers and therefore still use the strips.

The Association of Payment Clearing Services (Apacs), which masterminded the introduction of chip-and-pin in Britain, admits the technology used by Shell failed in this instance.

Mark Bowerman of Apacs said: “We are confident that this problem is specific to the type of keypad that Shell uses. But chip-and-pin keypads are supposed to shut down when tampered with so that part of the technology has obviously failed in this case. We are working with the manufacturer to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

One plus point for proponents of chip-and-pin is that the criminals did not use the fake cards to make purchases from other retailers because they could not clone the chips.

However, Abagnale believes that it will not be long before they find a way to crack the system completely. He said: “There is no foolproof system. Anything devised by a man or a woman can be defeated.”

Criminals are also targeting chip-and-pin users by fitting cash machines with a device that captures card data and positioning a camera nearby to record customers’ pins.