Police have received one report on March 12 that a woman attended a local restaurant and manually entered a credit card number, and tipped $100 mistakenly then asked for $80 cash back, on a $15 meal. The restaurant staff refused and correctly refunded the credit card back. The woman then purchased a gift card in the amount of $300, which was also later refunded back to the card.
Salmon Arm RCMP are advising local businesses to follow proper credit card usage policy. Allowing customers to manually enter credit card information, especially for a credit card that is not on their person, is highly suspicious and enables the use of stolen credit card numbers. All credit cards should have the owners name on the card, and can be cross checked against a second piece of identification. Customers asking for large cash refunds should be treated highly suspicious, and should only be refunded back to the credit card.
