Vancouver police have charged a woman and three men in a debit card scam that investigators say used highly sophisticated devices to record both debit card numbers and personal identification numbers.

Thieves would swap hand-held debit machines in stores with ones that were built to record numbers punched in during transactions, Const. Tim Fanning told reporters on Friday.

"If you are a clerk in a store and you're distracted for a second, someone can make the switch," he said.
 
The "parasite" readers collected up to 2,200 card numbers and PINs, according to Fanning. The thieves would then return to those stores a couple of days later and switch the machines back, he said. Store clerks should not leave their debit machines unattended, warned Fanning.

He said the thieves made fake debit cards and then ate out at fancy restaurants and got cash from bank machines. Police said they seized about $29,000 in cash while making arrests.
 
The first two arrests were carried out as suspects tried to make withdrawals at a downtown automated teller machine.