ATM fraud haunts State Bank of India clients

Chandigarh : said it is yet to make any headway in its investigations into five cases of fraudulent ATM withdrawals here during the last one week, which have created a panic among customers about the safety of their money.
“We are working on it... to find out how this thing (the fraud) has happened only with SBI customers,” a senior SBI official said on condition of anonymity, without divulging further information.
However, he said that the bank asked its customers, who used the ATMs where the fraud took place, to change their Personal Identification Numbers (PIN) in order to prevent a repeat incident.
In the past one week, SBI customers have lost over Rs 3 lakh in a series of frauds involving withdrawal of money using “cloned ATM cards”, even though the customers had the real ATM cards with themselves.
SBI officials admit this is the first time such a fraud has occurred at the bank.
Significantly, SBI has over one lakh customers in the city in 40 branches and it has 40 ATMs located in various parts of the city.
One of the victims, A K Arora, who is a Director at the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), said he was shocked to know that Rs 80,060 was withdrawn from his joint account, though no such money was withdrawn by him or his wife from the account.
“I came to know that a sum of Rs 80,060 was withdrawn at different intervals through ATM of sector 37-D, Sector 30 and Sector 32 on August 18 and August 19,” he said.
Arora, who lodged a complaint with the police, today met SBI bank officials and submitted his complaint to them.
“I asked SBI officials how the money can be withdrawn when ATM card was with his wife. I also told them that the bank’s credibility was at a stake with the withdrawal of money through cloned ATM cards and the bank should do something at the earliest,” he said.
Arora claimed that when he went to SBI’s office, he found a couple of customers getting their ATM cards blocked in the wake of fraudulent withdrawals.
According to police, unscrupulous people insert a card reader device in the ATMs slot and place a micro-camera behind the ATM to record the password entered by the card-holder. On the basis of the stolen information, they make a cloned ATM card and withdraw money.
With a spate of such incidents, SBI customers are worried about the safety of their money. “These incidents have forced me to check my balance in the account on daily basis to find out whether my money is saved or not,” said Renuka, a SBI customer.