Retiree loses Rs 25L to ATM cloning

PANCHKULA: A resident of Sector 20, SK Mehta, came to know on Saturday that he had lost Rs 2.54 lakh from his pension savings account with State bank of Patiala as some unknown individuals had made wrongful ATM withdrawals from it during the past few days.
With this case, a total of 15 SBoP and State Bank of India account-holders have lost money due to such withdrawals in Panchkula.
While giving details of incident, Mehta, a retired executive engineer (XEN) from Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB), said that he was unable to withdraw money from ATMs for the past three days due to a technical fault. However, when he visited the bank's Sector-7 branch on Saturday, he was shocked to see just Rs 69 as balance.
When the victim asked bank officials about this, they told him money had been withdrawn from his accounts at various ATMs in different cities during the past six days. The culprits had withdrawn money twice from an SBoP ATM in Derabassi, four times from Grain Market, Rajpura. Two withdrawals were made at SBI ATM at Lalru and the final withdrawal of Rs 14,500 was made at the SBI ATM at Sadar Bazar in Ambala on Saturday.
A formal complaint was lodged by the victim with the bank officials, who assured him to forward that to police authorities.
Earlier, Rs 2.79 lakh were wrongfully withdrawn from the account of Devinder Kumar Khosla, 65, a former employee of Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory (TBRL) from various ATMs located in Derabassi, Rajpura, Panchkula and Chandigarh.