Second FIR lodged against ATM trickster

AHMEDABAD: Haresh Patel, the Surat man whose banking dream run — withdrawing cash from ATMs without it being debited from his account — was abruptly halted by his arrest by Chandkheda police, is in even more trouble. The aggrieved bank discovered on Tuesday that he also withdrew Rs 94,000 from its ATMs in Shahibaug, in seven transactions, between July 2018 and January 2019.


The Union Bank of India first lodged a complaint against Patel one week ago, for fraudulently obtaining Rs 1.54 lakh. Patel would put a finger into the cash dispensing tray of the ATM so the machine would generate an error message.

“He would then approach the bank and claim that while he attempted a transaction, the cash was not dispensed from the ATM. He would then get the money reimbursed by the bank despite actually got cash,” a Shahibaug police official said.

According to complaint lodged at Shahibaug police station on Tuesday by Ramesh Chandra Solanki, a manager with the Union Bank of India (UBI), the cash deposited in their ATM and cash dispensed by the machine did not tally.

“Bank officials then checked records and decided to investigate Haresh Patel, a resident of Surat who had an account in the Haripura branch of UBI, for the anomaly. The reason was that Patel, from July to November 2018, had complained of cash not being dispensed some 11 times,” an investigator said.

His claims that the ATM had a glitch could not be corroborated when engineers checked the machine concerned multiple times.

“Bank officials then decided to check ATM footage and had a eureka moment. They saw that Patel would stick his finger into the cash dispenser before the money came out, blocking its path. The machine would record the transaction as having failed, but with the cash already in the tray, Patel stick his fingers in and get the notes out,” an investigator said.

Shahibaug police officials said they found out about the trick after Patel’s arrest by Chandkheda police.

Police sources said the same trick has been used by a few gangs earlier. “We are questioning him to know where he learnt the trick and whether he used it elsewhere,” a police source said.

Senior police officials said they will apply for custodial interrogation in Patel’s case.