Two in police net for new form of fraud targeting older ATMs
CUDDALORE: Two men from Bihar who were allegedly swindling money from ATMs in the city, using a new technique, were arrested on Sunday. Police said the fraud came to light when one N Srinivasan, an employee of the Public Works Department, noticed that Rs 20,000 was debited in excess from his account soon after he withdrew money from an SBI ATM at Chepauk a few days ago. He lodged a complaint with the Anna Nagar police. From the CCTV footage, police noticed that two men were inserting objects into the buttons of the ATM.
The two men, identified as J Manokar Kumar (26) and S Munna Kumar (26), were spotted by police in the area and arrested. Through their investigations, police said they found that the duo had been inserting small objects, like iron pin or matchsticks, into the buttons of the ATM. “When people were unable to enter the digits using the buttons, they would move to the other ATM in the centre. Meanwhile, one of the men would have noticed the person’s PIN, as they tried to enter the digits, and would tell the other who would quickly enter the PIN in the first ATM after removing the inserted objects and withdraw cash,” said a senior police officer supervising the investigations.
Police said most people assumed the transaction would have been cancelled as they had not entered the PIN number. The two men exploited this and targeted only older ATMs without touchscreen facility.
Police said both the accused had come from Bihar a week ago and had gone around the city to find such ATMs.