What appeared to be a routine pizza order turned into a quick theft at a pizza shop in Kitchener. Staff at a Domino’s location on Fairway Road said a woman walked into the store on Tuesday around 10 p.m. and acted as though she wanted to place an order. But instead, she took the store’s point-of-sale [POS] system to go. “She [was] pretending to be having a looking at the menu, but was checking out all the employees, where they are, and just looked for the perfect moment and grabbed the machine,” general manager Akshay Grover recalled. The suspect grabbed the left the store in less than a minute. Staff immediately noticed what had happened and contacted the manufacturer to deactivate the machine. The store had just upgrade to the new devices last week. Cybersecurity experts said thefts involving POS terminals are becoming increasingly common. “Stealing a point-of-sale terminal is actually a very useful thing for criminals. They can study it, they can dismantle it,” said Claudiu Popa, a security, privacy and cyberfraud risk advisor. Popa noted that staff did the right thing by contacting the manufacturer right away so the network knew the device couldn’t be trusted. “The POS terminals should not be placed where the public can reach [them] unless it’s time for them to interact with it,” Popa said. “Otherwise, anyone could come by and unplug it or tamper with it in some other way that will result in financial losses or the device loss itself.” Domino’s staff plan to change where they keep their terminals to prevent future thefts. While they are using a temporary replacement until a new unit arrives, the loss still impacts the bottom line. “We do hope it doesn’t happen to anybody, actually, because for any food industry business, anything over $1,000 is a lot of money,” Grover said. “It costs the company money, and affects everybody.” The theft has not yet been reported to police, but staff initially shared the surveillance video on social media in hopes the public might help identify the suspect. However, cybersecurity experts warn that incidents like this should be treated as serious security breaches. They strongly encourage business owners to report all payment terminal thefts to both local police and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
