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119 SBI ATMs tampered with in 2020, 21, ₹1crore siphoned off: Police
“The accused had identified a technical glitch in the machines and repeatedly misused it”, Satbir Singh , SHO at cyber crime police station, Ludhiana Commissionerate.
In a major cyber fraud case, the cyber crime police station of Ludhiana Commissionerate has registered an FIR against unidentified fraudsters for allegedly duping the State Bank of India (SBI) of nearly ₹1 crore by tampering with ATM machines across the city between 2020 and 2021.
The case was registered following orders from the Ludhiana sessions court, which the bank had approached after detecting suspicious transactions at multiple ATM kiosks. According to the complaint, the fraud was carried out at as many as 119 SBI ATM locations across Ludhiana.
The FIR has been lodged on the complaint of Avinash Kumar, manager at the treasury branch of SBI in Civil Lines.
Police have registered a case under Sections 420 (cheating) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code against unidentified accused.
Investigators said the fraudsters exploited a technical loophole in the ATM machines to carry out the scam. While withdrawing cash, the accused allegedly tampered with the machines, causing the system to record the transaction as failed even though the money had already been dispensed.
As a result, the bank’s system automatically reversed the transaction amount back into the fraudsters’ accounts, allowing them to walk away with both the cash and the refunded amount.
Inspector Satbir Singh, SHO of the cyber crime police station, said the initial probe indicates that the fraudsters systematically used this method at dozens of ATM kiosks across the city.
“The accused manipulated around 119 ATM kiosks and managed to cheat the bank of approximately ₹1 crore. They had identified a technical glitch in the machines and repeatedly misused it,” the officer said.
The SHO added that police are now collecting details of the bank accounts used in the fraudulent withdrawals and will trace the individuals linked to them. Authorities have also sought CCTV footage from the ATM kiosks in an attempt to identify the suspects involved in the fraud.
Police said a similar pattern of fraud had been used by miscreants between 2017 and 2020, when fraudsters took advantage of loopholes in ATM systems. Although police had claimed to have busted several such gangs in the past, incidents of ATM fraud continued to surface.
On September 7, 2021, the Khanna police had busted a gang involved in stealing cash from ATMs with the arrest of three Haryana men in connection with ATM frauds. According to police, the accused used to fraudulently withdraw money from ATM machines in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and other states. They had allegedly withdrawn around ₹6 crore from various banks.
In another case in August 2017, police recovered 641 debit cards of 18 different banks, 166 cheque books, 117 passbooks, ₹3 lakh in cash, besides a revolver, 12 bullets, three cars and eight mobile phones from fraudsters. The police had then claimed that the accused had duped banks of around ₹1 crore.
