Shell has banned the sale of two newspaper titles at a local garage in response to their Stop the Con campaign.

The Surrey Mirror series has been “blacklisted” for battling to stamp out alleged credit card fraud at Mole Valley petrol stations.

The fuel giant has banned sales of the newspaper and its sister paper the Dorking Advertiser at its branch in Buckland because it said the Stop the Con campaign was “embarrassing” for forecourt staff.

The firm made the decision to remove the newspapers last week following an article which revealed that the cost of chip and PIN fraud at the Reigate Road branch and other petrol stations in the area had reached £80,000.

But the company said it would still not consider removing its chip and PIN machines.

Scores of motorists contacted the newsdesk claiming they had money swiped from their accounts after using credit or debit cards at the Buckland outlet.

Shell has so far said there is still no evidence the filling station was to blame.

Franchisee Selvasothy Jayapiragus made the decision to stop the Surrey Mirror and Advertiser sales. A company spokesman said: “What has been printed for the past few weeks has been very embarrassing to us.

“It has come to the stage that we cannot continue selling the papers over the counter with these articles on the front page because it is not going on here.”

The spokesman declined to say what Shell was doing to assure customers of their cards’ safety or whether it would consider withdrawing chip and PIN machines at the branch.

The Mirror launched the Stop the Con campaign at the beginning of April in an attempt to get Surrey Police and Shell to do more to find those responsible for the crimes.

But in an interview with the Advertiser, the man leading the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Neville Blackwood, said he was not sure anyone would ever be caught.