Some Port Hope residents were shocked to find out last week that someone had stolen money from their bank accounts. According to Port Hope Police Constable Jim Dunn, someone or some group is responsible for this rash of debit card fraud, but they can’t make any statements as of yet due to lack of details and facts. He admits that they have received a disturbing amount of complaints from people all over town.

Last Friday, February 5, police from the Municipality of Port Hope took action as people began to notice that they had money go missing from their individual accounts.

Port Hope’s police authorities don’t have a final number of the residents affected by the fraud, but their investigation led them to believe that a number of merchants in the Port Hope area had compromised machines. One local bank in the region pointed out that this wave of debit card fraud is the largest they’ve ever seen.

According to Bobbi Lax VP of operations at Ganaraska Financial, there’s a major difference to complaints of credit and debit card in the past and what’s happened now. The marked increase is disturbing he added.

Investigation on the case is still ongoing.