Lunds & Byerlys Hit With Credit Card Skimmers

Four locations of Lunds & Byerlys were caught up in a credit card skimming scam across the Twin Cities. The independent retailer based in Minneapolis said skimmers were found in one of the self-checkout terminals at four of its locations: Woodbury, Eagan, Northeast Minneapolis and St. Louis Park, Minn.

The store manager of the Woodbury location found the first skimmers, according to local news reports, and alerted other stores and authorities.

“When the skimmers were discovered, we immediately notified law enforcement and provided them with the devices and additional information to assist in a federal investigation. Based on our work with local law enforcement and forensic experts, it appears only transactions where a credit or debit card was swiped are potentially impacted as there was not a chip reader on these known skimmers,” the company said in a statement.

Lunds & Byerlys said it believes the impact is limited to 10 transactions in the Northeast Minneapolis location that occurred between Jan. 30 and Feb. 5. No swipe transactions occurred at the other three skimmers located in the stores.

Local law enforcement indicated that the scammers work in pairs, with one person buying products while the other is skimming the card information.

Lunds & Byerlys is the latest retailer to experience such a scam. Last summer, Hy-Vee had transactions at its fuel pumps and non-front-end registers hacked.

Convenience-store chain Rutter’s also announced a data breach on Feb. 14 that occurred between Oct. 1, 2018, and May 29, 2019.

Data breaches have occurred at nearly every level of commerce, including retailers, banks, internet sites and credit card companies themselves. The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit organization that tracks data breaches, estimates more than 9,000 public breaches have occurred since 2005. More than 10 billion records—including passwords, credit card numbers and even passports—have been exposed.