The State Bank of India said it is yet to make headway in its investigations into cases of fraudulent ATM withdrawals in Chandigarh during the last one week, which have created a panic among customers about the safety of their money, as three more victims of such fraudulent withdrawals complained to the cyber crime investigation cell of the union territory police on Monday.

The three claimed that money from their accounts had been withdrawn and they came to know about that only through the mini-statements generated by the ATMs.

On Sunday, Rs1.11 lakh were taken out of the accounts of three other SBI customers through the use of cloned ATM cards. In the past one week, SBI customers have lost over Rs3 lakh in a series of frauds involving withdrawal of money using "cloned ATM cards".

The role of people working with the bank directly or indirectly is under the scanner. Police have sent a questionnaire to SBI about its personnel handling ATMs. They said that several loopholes in SBI management's functioning in connection with closed circuit television cameras and deployment of security guards for ATMs had also been detected.

SBI officials claimed the matter was under investigation and there had been no lapses on part of bank's management.

However, a senior police official said it had been established that somebody had installed skimmer machines, which detected and copied the PIN numbers of account-holders' cards, inside the ATMs and that could only have been possible in absence of security guards.

They also stated that the CCTV cameras inside the ATM booths were capturing low-resolution images. Moreover, in one of the instances, the culprits had covered the camera with a cloth before taking out money. "That is only possible if nobody is manning the ATM," said a police officer.

DSP Satbir Singh said, "This is an organised racket which is being operated from abroad, and the accused would be nabbed shortly." He refused to comment on the ongoing investigation other than saying that sketches of suspects would be released shortly.

Fraudulent withdrawals were carried out at SBI ATMs in Sectors 30, 22, 49 and 37. SBI authorities have already shut down the ATM machines in sectors 30 and 32.

Chief manager of SBI's Sector 30 branch D P S Chabra said, "Following the complaints of fraudulent withdrawal, the ATM in this sector has been taken out of service and we are requesting SBI customers to change PIN codes of their respective ATM cards."

Police officials said the racketeers operated from countries like Ukraine, Thailand, Hong Kong and China.

The first such fraud in the region was reported in Mohali in June when miscreants had stolen Rs50,000 from the account of a software engineer. That case is under investigation, SBI says.

Police suspect that more than 150 customers of SBI have been cheated through the ATM card fraud in the region. As complaints flow in, officials say it's unlikely they'll stop anytime soon. 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.

Meanwhile, the bank has asked its customers to take various precautions, such as frequently changing the PIN number of the ATM card; always keying in the wrong PIN number after withdrawing money; and strangest of all, to prefer paying in cash instead of using debit cards, at a time when banks are supposed to encourage the use of plastic.