PUNE: The police are investigating a complaint lodged by officials of a public sector bank claiming that Rs8.1 lakh was stolen from two unmanned ATMs in
Dhankawdi
and Sadashiv Peth.
According to the complaint, the culprits used cloned
debit cards
to commit the crime between September 26 and October 12.
A study of the modus operandi revealed that the suspects would insert a cloned card, enter the withdrawal amount and a PIN to trigger the machine’s operation. Right after, they would disconnect the machine to stop it from “asking” the bank to approve the transaction, by which time the ATM would start to dispense the cash, police said. In the case of the Sadashiv Peth ATM, the suspects tampered with the Internet cable and pressed the reset button of while withdrawing the cash, police said.
Police said the suspects used this trick multiple times to withdraw Rs5.66 lakh from the Dhankawdi ATM between September 26 and 30, and Rs2.46 lakh from the Sadashiv Peth ATM during the night intervening October 11 and 12. The theft was discovered during the bank’s reconciliation exercise.
Post-tabulation and study of
CCTV
footage at the two ATMs, the authorities discovered the theft. Bank officer Hrishiraj Bhosale (34) lodged an
FIR
with the Sahakarnagar police, while his colleague Ashutosh Upadhyay lodged a separate FIR with the Dattawadi police.
Police said the number of transactions could not be immediately ascertained as the bank’s server did not receive any hits.
“The bank has no idea about how the culprits managed to withdraw the cash without transaction approvals. The Internet cable attached to the ATM unit was tampered with,” senior inspector Nandkumar Bidvai of the Sahakarnagar police said.