A FRAUDSTER outwitted sophisticated banking security systems by using an ordinary MP3 music player to bug cash machines and steal customers’ credit card secrets.

Maxwell Parsons, 41, was the central figure in a gang who went on to steal goods worth hundreds of thousands of pounds in high street stores across Britain.

The banking industry was so alarmed by the gang’s method, believed to be unique in this country, that they immediately moved to plug the technological loophole.

Parsons, a well-known criminal figure, was jailed for 32 months after pleading guilty at Minshull Street Crown Court to deception and unlawful interception of a public telecommunications transmission.

The fraudster learnt how to carry out the fraud from the example set by criminal gangs in Malaysia where the method of fraud was used with devastating effect against the banking system.

Parsons or other gang members would use MP3 portable music players to record data transmitted from free-standing ATM cash machines. The data was then converted to readable numbers using a separate computer programme.

The phone line running from the machine to an ordinary BT white socket was unplugged and a two-way adaptor inserted. The MP3 player was then placed between the ATM machine’s output cable and the phone socket.

The player would record the tones, which resemble the kind of sound emitted by a fax machine.

These were then interpreted using a modem line tap, or MLT, acquired from Canada, or passed through a computer software program bought illicitly in Ukraine.

Parsons, of Gorton, Manchester, was able to exploit his knowledge of credit card security systems to put together credit card numbers and the cards’ expiry dates. The gang used the data to encode and clone a number of credit cards.

The stolen data were later tracked back to purchases worth £200,000, although police were able to trace only £14,000 to Parsons.

He was arrested by chance by police in the City of London when the driver of the car in which he was travelling was stopped for an illegal U-turn. Officers found a counterfeit bank card in his possession. When police later raided his home in inner Manchester they discovered technical equipment necessary to carry out the scam. They also found 26 bank cards of which 18 were cloned and the rest counterfeit.

The gang targeted freestanding ATM machines in bars, bingo halls and bowling alleys.

Apacs, the payments association, said chip-and-PIN cards were brought in to combat such fraud, but admitted that “card not present” transactions were still vulnerable.

ALERT TO FRAUD

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