AN investigation into credit card fraud at a Worcester petrol station has been extended to more countries in the Far East.

Worcester police have revealed that a man arrested in connection with the investigation has now been released on bail.

It is thought more than 150 customers of the BP petrol station in Castle Street have now fallen victim to actual and attempted card fraud in the Far East.

Meanwhile the locations where cloned cards have been used has widened from Thailand to other locations in the Far East, although officers have not yet revealed where.

Officers were alerted to the first scam on November 21 following a call from a member of the public - and searched the premises the following day.

Since then police have continued to receive calls from customers, who have discovered money missing from their accounts or whose banks have detected a potential theft.

Detective Inspector Graham Smith who is heading the investigation said: "While the banks and other finance organisations are acting more quickly in detecting that unusual attempts are being made to draw money from these UK accounts, the number of incidents continues to grow as more and more incidents are reported.

"We continue to advise anyone who has bought fuel, or other items, from the Castle Street premises to double-check their accounts at the earliest opportunity, both for peace of mind and to help our enquires with additional information at the earliest opportunity.

"As it is increasingly apparent that large numbers of customers had their card details copied and PIN numbers obtained during October, November and December we are advising customers who have used the premises during that time to change their PIN numbers as a fraud prevention measure."

As previously reported in the Worcester News, the Castle Street BP station was temporarily closed in April, along with its sister site in Blackpole Road and the Malthurst garage in Droitwich Road, Worcester and six people arrested after it emerged that £250,000 had been taken from 167 customers' accounts.

Investigations into those incidents are being carried out by Scotland Yard, but police are not directly linking the two sets of incidents.

Police advise all credit and debit card customers to shield the terminal while entering their PIN numbers.

Customers do not need to hand over their cards and should place and remove it from the chip reader themselves.