ATM Fraud: 5 East Europeans under police scanner [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

ATM Fraud: 5 East Europeans under police scanner

Local February 18, 2016

Police on Wednesday said one of five suspected East European citizens might be involved in the recent automated teller machine card fraudulence that led to the theft of Tk 20.59 lakh in the city.
They said they identified the suspects after reviewing close circuit television footages collected from ATM booths of fours affected banks.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police additional commissioner Monirul Islam, during a press conference, said the suspected foreigners were under police watch.
On February 12 United Commercial Bank Limited filed a misappropriation case with Banani Police Station stating Tk 1.26 lakh had been stolen from a number of its ATM booths through cards forgery.
The Detective Branch of Police was tasked to investigate the case.
Three other banks also faced similar ATM card fraudulence after unidentified skimmers stole Tk 17.53 lakh by forging data of 24 account holders of EBL, Tk 14.40 lakh of four card holders of the City Bank, and
Tk 40,000 of one card holder of MTBL.
BB on Wednesday directed the banks to provide compensation to the affected 36 account holders in the next one week.
Monirul Islam said they identified four to five suspected foreigners with a similar appearance to the person on the CCTV footage collected from the affected ATM booths.
He said one of the foreigners had past links to ATM forgery.
He said they were taking time to scrutinise the details since the suspects are foreigners.
He said they are confident of arresting the culprit once the scrutiny is completed.
He said none of them will be allowed to leave the country.
Monirul said they were also examining whether any official of the banks were involved in the forgery.
On Saturday, Bangladesh Bank asked several banks to block around 200 ATM cards that have likely been read by ‘skimming devices’ between February 7 and 9.
BB executive director Subhankar Saha on Wednesday said the skimmers forged data of more than 1,200 cards of 26 banks by setting skimming devices in six booths of EBL, UCBL and the City bank.
He said the skimmer was able to get data of other banks as they are inter-linked.
He said the BB asked the banks to strengthen the monitoring in ATM transaction.
BB already asked the banks to set up anti-skimming device and PIN shield device at their automated teller machines by one month to tackle such fraud.
The BB asked the banks to review the video footage of their ATM booths on a daily basis.