Airport scam steals hundreds of credit card numbers from travelers

Sunday, November 19th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) _ Workers collecting fees at Vancouver International Airport ran a scam stealing credit card numbers from hundreds of travelers and making counterfeit cards, police said.

Two men and a woman who worked at a kiosk at the international gate collecting airport improvement fees have been arrested and face fraud charges.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Peter Thiessen said they would swipe the cards through a legitimate charging machine, then through ``an illegal device _ smaller than a pager _ that would record that number.'' They would then produce counterfeit cards.

Travelers through the airport had to pay a fee ranging from $3 to $9. Police believe that more than 600 credit card numbers were stolen over the past six weeks in the scam, Thiessen said. Police are working with credit card companies to find out who else was involved, he said.

The suspects, arrested Thursday and Friday, were employees of a private company contracted by the airport to collect the fee.

Authorities were alerted by a credit card company that noticed a high number of abnormal charges, all racked up after the airport improvement fee had been paid.