HOUSTON — Savannah Dansby discovered a credit card skimmer attached to a checkout machine at a Pyburns grocery store located at 12675 Fondren Road near Fonmeadow Boulevard in southwest Houston on the Sunday before Memorial Day weekend. She was using her EBT card to pay for groceries when she noticed something unusual while swiping it.

"When I went to go swipe my food stamp card, something snugged my food stamp card," Dansby said. "That’s when I found out it was a skimmer." She pulled on the device and it came off the machine.

Dansby alerted store employees about the skimmer and contacted Houston police the day after her discovery. During a 911 call, she told dispatchers she believed the device was attached to a payment terminal inside the grocery store and said she had already notified a manager. Police were dispatched to the Pyburns store on Fondren Road on Sunday following her report.

Credit card skimmers are devices designed to fit over legitimate payment terminals and capture card information from unsuspecting customers. Authorities note such devices can be installed on grocery store checkout machines and ATMs, not just gas pumps. The U.S. Secret Service announced last week that investigators found more than a dozen skimmers across the Houston area during a large-scale operation targeting card fraud devices.