Scammer incidents down in Cape Coral following gas pump security ordinance

According to Cape Coral Police, scammer incidents at gas stations are down significantly from the years 2017 and 2018.

CCPD says A report showed that there were 81 skimmers located in SWFL in 2017 and Cape Coral had its fair share unfortunately. There were 11 cases in each year of 2017 and 2018. There has only been one incident in 2019 so far.

The change comes after the Cape Coral City Council unanimously passed a Retail Gas Pump Security Measures ordinance on March 5, 2018.

The ordinance was presented by Chief David Newlan who explained that the ordinance requires the businesses to add safeguards to deter criminals from placing their skimmers into the pumps.

CCPD says that as part of the ordinance, the business has to install a device or system that will render the gas pump, or the scanning device in the gas pump, inoperable if there is an unauthorized opening of the gas pump panel. Or a device or system that encrypts the customer payment card information in the scanning device. It is up to the business to choose and purchase which option for the security measure they wished to use.