A DAD believes his bank card was cloned in Middlewich after £90 was stolen from his account.

Leon Brookes, from Bembridge Drive, was left shocked after a transaction was made on his Nationwide account on Thursday, June 29. The thief used his details in a London-based Boots retailer.

His bank card was last used by his son on Wednesday, June 28 to withdraw cash from Tesco Express in Wheelock Street.

Leon, who works in security, isn’t sure where his card was cloned in the town but says that he only regularly uses the cash machines at Tesco Express and Morrisons in Newton Bank.

The 35-year-old said: “My son had used my bank card to withdraw some money from the machine and when he came back he said he thought he saw something move.

“I looked at my account and noticed the money had gone. I rang Nationwide, my bank, straight away and they confirmed it had been used and reimbursed me as soon as they could.

“Like most people, I pay a lot of my bills on the card and now I have to wait for a new one before I can so this has been a huge inconvenience for me.

“I don’t think there is enough information out there to help prevent this sort of thing from happening.

“It’s getting very common and there have been a lot of people around the area who have had similar problems.

“I think it happened to me by pure chance more than anything. But somebody might suffer a lot worse from the situations than I did.

Nationwide has issued a number of tips that can help with card safety.

They include keeping your card out of sight, shielding your PIN, looking for obvious signs of machine tampering, reporting if a machine retains your card, always logging out of online shopping and regularly checking bank statements for any irregularities.