Can you imagine a situation when you have your ATM/debit card in your pocket but somebody withdraws an amount of your money from an ATM? It would be more shocking if you are told by the bank that somebody ‘withdrew' money from your account from an ATM located faraway.

This is a new trend in frauds at ATMs going by the the experience of some victims who lost their money recently.

Consider the case of Mr Ananth (name changed), a marketing professional in Hyderabad with an account with the ICICI Bank. On Friday, he received an SMS alert that Rs 15,000 had been withdrawn in two tranches from an ATM of Bank of Baroda in Mumbai! There were some others who found that money of varying amounts was withdrawn from ATMs of different banks in different locations in a similar fashion.

When contacted, ICICI bank officials said that the problem could be ‘elsewhere' as the victims were using non-ICICI Bank ATMs.

Since the affected people said they had used a particular ATM of Axis Bank located here, it is now being suspected that software of the ATM was perhaps ‘hacked' to copy details of user cards. The key components in an ATM/debit card are the magnetic strip and the personal identification number (PIN). “If these could be copied, cloning of ATM/Debit cards should not be a big problem given the nature of available technology,'' the IT head of a leading public sector bank told Business Line .

When contacted, an official of Axis Bank said: “Similar complaints are now being received in the banking industry of late. This is a new type of fraud and we have alerted our internal fraud detection and technology teams to study this.''

Axis Bank had also shut down the ATM that was suspected to be ‘under watch' by the fraudsters. For victims, getting the lost money back would be difficult as they need to file a complaint with the police first.

Since many banks have no clue on how the fraud is happening, it may take time before the grievance is redressed. .

In the absence of any immediate redress, it may be better to keep a tab on your account balance to notice any fraud at the earliest, suggest bankers.

“But it is the primary responsibility of banks to ensure safety of my money. They cannot leave it to customers,'' says Mr Ananth.

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