Blurred footprints, a smooth flat stone good for skimming.

NEWYORKER: Getting Closer

Police have warned the public to look out for card skimming devices after two were found on cash machines in Fife in the last week.

BBC: Card skimming warning for Fife cash machines

The nation was surprised (as was the SEC) when the Attorney General for the State of New York demonstrated that the mutual fund industry had been skimming money out of investor accounts for decades.

FORBES: Why the SEC Is In Danger of Becoming Irrelevant ( February 28, 2006 )

The rules have worked out just swimmingly for sponsors of retirement plans and financial services firms skimming from such plans.

FORBES: IBM 401(k) Participants Need Their Own "Shadow" Fiduciary to Guard Retirement Benefits

MediaNews has a genius for bunching small suburban papers around metro areas, skimming off advertising revenue that would otherwise have gone to the big paper in the city.

FORBES: Encirclement

And then you subtract from that the burning that has been done with the platform and the oil on the surface with the controlled burn, for example -- the application of dispersants, skimming operations and in situ.

WHITEHOUSE: Press Briefing on Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico

In the last week, we have shifted control of skimming assets to the commander and the Incident Command Post in Alabama, who is responsible for Mississippi, Alabama and Florida -- and actually have detached a task force to work for him to push out 50 miles offshore and find these smaller patches and try and deal with them before they get to shore.

WHITEHOUSE: Daily Press Briefing

When this operation started, we were controlling all skimming and in-situ burning operations out of the Incident Command Post in Houma, Louisiana, which has responsibility for the area where the well is at.

WHITEHOUSE: Daily Press Briefing