Police in London urge public to use different pins for gym and bank cards
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Criminals stealing hundreds of pounds by snooping locker codes and using them to access accounts with same pin. Police have urged the public to use different pin codes at the gym after a prolific thief stole hundreds of pounds from a man he snooped on while entering a locker code that he also used for his bank card.
Last September Declan Murphy, 35, secretly watched the victim as he typed in a locker code at a luxury central London gym. After stealing the victim’s phone and bank card from the locker, Murphy then successfully guessed that the four-digit code on the card would be the same as the locker code.
He stole £500 from the account and bought himself time by damaging the victim’s phone by drenching it in water and preventing access to his banking app. Murphy, from Bromley, was found to be using membership cards under false names to repeatedly access Third Space and Nuffield Health gyms, Isleworth crown court heard.
He also withdrew £1,750 using three different bank cards stolen from a different gym, and used a separate stolen card to try to withdraw £600. The victims who lost money were eventually compensated by their banks, the court heard. On Friday Murphy was jailed for two years and three months after pleading guilty to three counts of theft and 11 counts of fraud by false representation. Sentencing judge Edward Connell described Murphy’s offending as “pre-planned” and “well-practiced”.
