Bhubaneswar Police arrests three from Haryana for cash theft from ATMs

BHUBANESWAR: The special squad of the commissionerate police on Monday arrested a gang of three persons from Haryana for allegedly stealing more than Rs 1.5 lakh from some ATMs over the last two days by tampering with the cash dispensers. The gang targeted a total of 11 unguarded ATMs, including five in Bhubaneswar and six in Cuttack, of a leading nationalised bank.
The accused were identified by the police as Mohammad Salman (18) and Raj Kumar Tanwar (35) from Faridabad, and Sheikh Kafhaiyat (35) from Nuh. The police said the accused came to Odisha in their SUV, which has been seized. They were trying to steal cash from an ATM in the Old Town area when the bank received an alarm and immediately informed the police, leading to their arrest.
Narrating their modus operandi, the police said the accused fiddled with the cash dispensing trays of the ATMs to commit the fraud. “We found that the accused damaged the cash dispenser windows and inserted a small steel plate into them. This hindered the cash dispensing system of the machines,” Sanjeev Satapathy, the assistant commissioner of police (special squad), said.
The accused had taken many debit cards from their acquaintances and used those to defraud the bank. They first inserted the debit cards and placed the amount they wanted to withdraw on the screen.
“They withdrew the cash from the dispensing trays. However, the sensors perhaps misread the action owing to the damage caused to the dispensers. The sensors sent auto-generated messages to the servers about the transactions having failed and cash not being dispensed. Within seconds, the bank accounts concerned were credited despite the withdrawal of the cash from the ATMs,” Satapathy said.
The police are likely to take the accused into custody for interrogation. They said the accused are part of a bigger interstate gang whose members have been targeting unguarded ATMs in different states. The police have advised the banks to improve the security features, including software systems of their ATMs, and deploy security guards.
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