Crime Scenes

If You’ve Shopped at a Lucky Supermarket Recently, Your Identity May Have Been Stolen

Ouch.
Ouch.

With a name like Lucky … oh the irony. At least 100 people have already had their bank accounts infiltrated by some wily identity thieves who attached credit card “skimmers” to card scanners at self-checkout stands at 23 Northern California Lucky stores. The Save Mart supermarket chain, which owns Lucky, discovered the problem early last month and sent out a customer advisory on November 23. As multiple news sources are reporting, the company is now urging customers who used self-checkout stands at any of the affected stores (listed below) to close their bank accounts immediately.

Ouch.

This includes shoppers at San Francisco’s Lucky store on Sloat Boulevard. The company says it has now checked all of its 233 stores, and only the 23 below had their machines tampered with. They insist that the card readers are now all safe.

So far, the majority of identity theft victims, strangely, were store employees. In total, 23 customers and 80 store employees have reported fraudulent charges on their accounts. The skimmers, now removed, stole debit card and pin numbers as well as personal information that allowed the thieves to access victims’ accounts.

Talk about an unlucky PR nightmare. Any Lucky customer who finds fraudulent charges on their debit or credit card should contact the store’s Customer Support Center at 800.692.5710.

This is the full list of stores where card readers were tampered with:

815 Marina Village Parkway, Alameda
6843 Mission St., Daly City
1000 El Cerrito Plaza, El Cerrito
5000 Mowry Ave., Fremont
35820 Fremont Blvd., Fremont
919 Edgewater Blvd., Foster City
25151 Santa Clara St., Hayward
45 Murchison Drive, Millbrae
1350 S Park Victoria Dr., Milpitas
715 E El Camino Real, Mountain View
1761 Grant Ave., Novato
939 Lakeville Highway, Petaluma
1530 Fitzgerald Drive, Pinole
200 Woodside Plaza, Redwood City
1133 Old County Rd., San Carlos
234 Saratoga Ave., Santa Clara
5510 Monterey Highway, San Jose
200 El Paseo De Saratoga, San Jose
844 Blossom Hill Rd., San Jose
3270 South White Rd., San Jose
1515 Sloat Blvd., San Francisco
484 N Mathilda Ave., Sunnyvale
32300 Dyer St., Union City
SaveMart, 1465 Main St., Watsonville

Lucky urges some customers to close bank accounts [BCN/Tribune]
Lucky Supermarket Chain Reveals Scope Of Card Reader Scam [CBS]

If You’ve Shopped at a Lucky Supermarket Recently, Your Identity May Have