FOR THE second time in the last few months, police have linked identity theft to credit card information stolen from the pumps at a Forest Avenue gas station, Pacific Grove Police Cmdr. John Miller said this week.

Last Thursday, a victim of identity theft contacted PGPD, and investigators were able to trace the stolen credit card information back to the 76 station on Forest Hill — the same station from which customers’ credit card numbers were stolen late last year.

“Police immediately responded to the gas station, and, with the cooperation of the gas station management, inspected all gas pumps for a skimmer,” he said. Skimmers are small devices thieves surreptitiously attach to the pump at the point of sale to collect vital credit and debit information. They come in various forms and can be affixed internally or externally, and their information can be harvested by cell phone, so the thieves never have to touch the pumps again.

Fuel pumps are typically opened with a universal key that’s relatively easy to acquire, investigators have said in the past, and gas station employees are often in the habit of checking pumps regularly to ensure they haven’t been tampered with. In 2010, an employee at the 76 station on Carmel Rancho Boulevard found two skimmers attached to pumps there.

More recently, two of the devices were recovered from inside the pumps at the same Pacific Grove 76 station on Dec. 7, 2012, and Miller said management there “is working to improve the security on the gas pumps.”

So far, between the first report Feb. 21 and Feb. 25, Miller said his department fielded another three calls about identity theft, which were also linked to the theft and unlawful use of credit card information stolen from the station.

Police advise the public to run credit checks and monitor their bank information regularly, so that such theft can be caught as quickly as possible, and to use credit cards to avoid entering their PINs at the pumps.