Car
Owners of an electric car have become victims of charging station fraud in recent weeks. Fake QR codes have been installed at public charging stations in Brussels.
Energy company Energyvision reported the fraud on Tuesday to its customers, to the Brussels police and to the FPS Economy. The fraudsters’ website is now offline, which means that the risk of customers being defrauded has been averted for the time being. CEO of Energyvision Maarten Michielssens thinks that a maximum of one hundred customers have become victims. The fraudsters cheated each of them out of 300 euros. But because the fraud occurred through credit cards, they could get that money back.
Energyvision has placed a warning on Linkedin. A video shows how the fraud works. The fraudsters have placed a sticker with a false QR code over the normal sticker. Anyone who wants to charge without a charging card is redirected via the QR code to a fake website to make the credit card payment. The customer can then simply charge, because a connection to Energyvision is also established after an error message.
“As a result, the consumer does not immediately notice anything,” says Michielssens. After a complaint, he immediately took action and had 2,000 charging stations checked. Twenty of these turned out to contain a fake QR sticker. The option to charge via the code without a charging card has now been disabled at Energyvision. “The fact that the stickers have been physically applied shows that the fraudsters have been active here in Brussels,” says Michielssens. “So it is not about internet fraud from a distant, exotic country.” He hopes that the over-pasting has been captured on camera footage. This would give the police possible leads to track down the fraudsters. The IP address of the fake website is another possibility.
Not the first time
Most drivers of an electric car charge with a charging card. But about 5 percent do so by scanning a QR code. Energyvision must offer this option because it was a condition for installing the poles. But Energyvision had already warned about its susceptibility to fraud, says Michielssens. On some posts the QR code is visible on a screen. That is slightly safer, because the code can be changed quickly and because it is impossible to stick a sticker over it.
The QR codes on charging stations are also related to the European obligation to make the charging infrastructure as accessible as possible. The directive, which has been in force since April 13, obliges charging station operators to also accept payments without a charging card. This can be done by installing a payment card terminal, but a QR code is a cheaper alternative.
A similar fraud case came to light in France at the end of last year. In the Loiret department, south of Paris, the stickers with QR codes also appeared to have been pasted over by scammers. The phenomenon has also been observed in Great Britain. Major charging station operators such as Ionity and Total Energies have already published warnings to alert consumers to the risk of fraud with QR codes.
