ATM frauds: clueless SBI dumps onus on clients

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The three claimed that money from their accounts had been withdrawn and they came to know about that only through the mini-statements generated by the ATMs.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