Radio 1 DJ stung by cash card con

A Radio 1 DJ has become the latest victim of cash machine fraudsters.

Scott Mills had details of his bank card copied as he tried to withdraw money from an ATM which had been fitted with a "skimming" device.

Mills, 31, made the discovery when he tried to use the card again. "I tried to take out some money and it said I'd exceeded my limit and I thought I hadn't taken any money out for two days," he said. "It's not nice when it happens to you."

The criminals had fitted the device to the machine's cash slot, enabling them to copy the magnetic strip on Mills's card. A camera secretly fitted to the top of the machine recorded his card's PIN as he tapped it in.

Last year criminals robbed card users of ?74.6 million - a 40 per cent increase on 2003.

A spokesman for Apacs, the trade association for banks and building societies, said: "This type of crime is definitely on the increase and what happened to Scott is by no means unusual."

Banks hope chip-and-pin technology will thwart skimming gangs because the microchips built into the cards are difficult to copy.

The Apacs spokesman said a customer's best defence was to shield their PIN with one hand while keying it in with the other.