By Elle Wood

FELTON — With the growth of technology comes new ways for private information to be illegally distributed.

One method is via skimmers that can be attached to retailers’ credit card readers. These devices take information from the card to later access the owners’ accounts.

Christina Latchum is a recent victim of a skimmer.

“Within the last couple months, my debit card had kept getting hacked,” she said this week. “I kept having to go to my bank and get a new debit card. I have just been paranoid ever since that because it keeps happening to me.”

Then, on June 19, she discovered a card skimmer at a newly installed self-checkout system at the Dollar General in Felton.

“I frequent them all the time,” Ms. Latchum said. “I frequent them more than Walmart.”

However, after having her card hacked multiple times, she has been careful with the purchases she makes by looking over the checkout equipment before she uses it. And it was no different when she and her oldest son went to Dollar General to get snacks last week.

“While my son is ringing up the snacks, the machine looked as normal as it could be. It did not look suspicious, so I decided to pull on it, and right when I barely pulled on it, it popped open, and I could see the keypad behind it,” Ms. Latchum said.

She knew immediately what she found.

“Right when I saw the keypad, my heart sank, and I knew right away it was a skimmer.”

She placed a call to 911 and was told that police were on the way. That’s when she began recording video of the incident on her phone.

At the same time, a Dollar General employee was on the phone with a manager, who requested to speak to Ms. Latchum.

Reluctantly, she listened to the man on the other end of the line demand that she give the skimmer to the employee, she said.

Though Ms. Latchum did not want to give up the skimmer until police arrived, she handed it to the employee, who told her the manager wanted photos of the device. But the worker then snatched the skimmer and locked it in the store’s office, she said.

As a crowd of customers grew, Ms. Latchum called the police again and was told they were en route and to go to her vehicle.

While in her car, she received a call from someone identifying himself as an officer, telling her to leave the premises. “I went outside with my son, and not even a minute later, I had a private number call me, and I answered it, and this man was like ‘This is Cpl. Sims, and I just looked at the skimmer personally, and it is not a skimmer, and you are to leave the store right now,’” Ms. Latchum said.

However, no police officers ever arrived at the scene, she said, adding that she was still awaiting contact from Delaware State Police or the Felton Police Department as of Monday afternoon.

“I just get in my car and leave, but something was just bothering me,” Ms. Latchum said. “I had all these recordings, so I put them on social media, and it just blew up from there.”

The next day, Felton police posted a statement on their social media, alerting followers of the skimming device and its location, as well as encouraging customers “to monitor their accounts for any fraudulent activities.”

“We have taken possession of the skimming device,” Police Chief Christopher Guild said. “We have it in our evidence. We have contacted the attorney general’s office to let them know about the incident, as well as the United States Secret Service and the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Pennsylvania.”

The Montgomery County agency is specifically trained in these skimming devices, he said, and will perform a full forensic investigation on it.

Chief Guild added that, as of Monday, there was no suspect identified in connection with the crime. But the department is awaiting video footage leading up to the skimmer’s discovery.

“Last we spoke with the store manager, she checked the (card readers) on Monday, and there was nothing on them whatsoever,” he said.

Meantime, two days after the skimmer was found in Felton, another was located at the Dollar General in Georgetown, also on a self-checkout kiosk.

“I know there’s been another skimming device found in the Georgetown Dollar General,” Chief Guild said. “I do not know if there is any linkage. Could they be related, absolutely, but we are just not that far in the investigation to prove that just yet.”

Contacted Wednesday, an employee who answered the phone at the Felton store said staff had no comment.

As such incidents are becoming more common, though, Ms. Latchum wants to help others keep their money safe.

“I just want to warn people to watch when you use your card. Check the machine, pull on it and see if it pops off because, if there is a skimmer on it, (it) comes off very easily,” she said.

The several hacks on her card led her to research the devices.

“When my card started getting hacked, I started going online,” Ms. Latchum said. “I started with TikTok, just like everybody else, and I looked up skimmers and saw people sharing videos of the same thing happening to them at gas stations and all that.

“I educated myself, and that’s how I was able to catch it. It was just crazy.”