4 held for tampering with ATM
Nikhil Bhardwaj
Tribune News Service
Ludhiana, November 18
The city police have arrested four miscreants, including a Delhi-based man, for cheating banks by tampering with the ATMs. The police have recovered 12 ATMs and Rs 40,000 from the accused.
The accused have been identified as Gaurav Bajaj of Basant Vihar; Gaurav’s maternal uncle Sourav Dogra of Amarpura; Akash Gupta of Shakti Nagar; Gurmel Singh of Nushera village Tarn Taran; Gurmeet Singh of Tinda Wali village Fazilka; Sahib Singh of Karmu Wala village, Tarn Taran, and Rajinder of Jalalabad. Those arrested are Gurmeet, Gurmel, Akash and Sahib, while raids were on to arrest the remaining accused, who are still at large. As per the police, Gaurav owns a hosiery unit in the city.
Inspector Rajesh Kumar, who busted the racket, said the accused were rounded up by the police after acting on a tip-off. They confessed to having committed the fraud by tampering the ATMs.
The inspector said the accused had deceitfully obtained ATM cards of their near and dear ones from banks.
“They were making fraudulent withdrawals from ATMs through genuine ATM cards without affecting the bank balance and then also claiming the refund from the bank. This has exposed the banking security system. Despite cash being withdrawn from the ATM machine and the beneficiary receiving the message of withdrawal, the ATM would show transaction as declined and the same entry would not show in the banking record, due to which swindlers used to take refund from banks,” Inspector Rajesh said.
He said: “After inserting the ATM cards in the machine, the accused used to cut the power supply of the machine the moment it was about to dispense cash. With this, they used to get money and the ATM slip would show transaction declined. Banks on the other hand had no record. Later, they used to approach the bank to complain that despite getting a message of withdrawal, they did not get the money. Since the bank had not record of withdrawal, it used to refund the money. The accused may have withdrawn several lakhs in the past.”
