McDonald\'s employee skimmed customer payment cards for 3 weeks

A McDonald's employee used a handheld skimming device for 3 weeks to gather "approximately 282" card numbers.

According to wkyc.com, the unidentified man from Oklahoma told authorities that he sold the cardboard numbers to four men. Nearly all of the cards were used at a McDonald's in Tulsa, Oklahoma, while internet searches have been done on a seized computer for magnetic-strip card readers and writers and browsing devices.

The McDonald's employee told authorities that one of the most men, Daniel Jefferson, would come to his apartment each night after work and download the cardboard numbers from the skimmer. He said he was paid $600 and given two laptops and a Nintendo 3DS.

A woman contacted the Bank of Oklahoma about $316.32 in charges to her debit card from a Tulsa Wal-Mart, and surveillance footage showed Godlive Tetty-Mensah making the purchases.

Jefferson, Tetty-Mensah, Stanjulfran Mensah and Bismark Baah are in jail on charges that they re-encoded other cards to purchase iPads and laptop computers. The McDonald's worker wasn't identified inside the court filing.

In an announcement, McDonald's said: “Nothing is more important to us than the protection of our customers. It is an isolated incident which we take very seriously, and this person isn't any longer employed by our organisation.”

The haul was much smaller than that from a branch of Subway where card data from 80,000 people was collected. McDonald's was the victim of an information breach in December 2010 when a 3rd party was hacked and customer information collected in reference to promotions was accessed.