Southend residents are being targeted by criminals who are running a devious cashpoint scam, police admitted today.

The fraud involves fooling people into thinking the cash machine has swallowed their card and then carefully watching them type in their PIN number while offering to 'help' them.

The scam started in London but now Southend police have said they had several reports of the same thing being tried in the town during the last month.

The Lebanese Loop ploy, so called because it was first used by a group of Lebanese students in South America, involves a plastic card being attached to a loop of magnetic ribbon and inserted into a cash machine.

This then holds on to any cards inserted afterwards, giving the customer the impression they have been swallowed by the machine.

A seemingly helpful passer-by claims to have experienced the same thing and suggests they type in their PIN number again.

They then watch carefully and memorise the PIN, and when the customer goes inside to speak to somebody at the bank, they remove the card and run off to use it at another cash machine nearby.

A spokesman for Southend Police said: "It is difficult to say how many cases we have had of this now, but we've had a lot of people reporting that they've thought somebody had tried to trick them."

In two cases in Southend last month, fraudsters were described as young women of Eastern European appearance.

Published Monday October 14, 2002

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