Holy Crap! Someone stole $1600 from my ATM account! (1 Viewer)

[Marty Christion]

About 10 days after my first call, the bank credited all the lost funds back to my account. I've called twice since then, and both times I've been told they were "still investigating".

I still haven't heard if the matter was fully resolved, but I'm assuming (hoping?) this is the end of it for me, and I won't lose the money.

Thanks for all the replies. It definitely helped to hear about others' experiences (and their banks willingness to compensate them).

 

[Scott McGillivray]

Sucks that this happened to you!

My own personal form of protection from such fraud is to just stay perpetually broke. If someone gets my card, they will be in for a sad surprise since I have no money!

 

[MarcoBiscotti]

This happened to my friend and his entire family last month.

He went to make a deposit and the ATM basically "ate" his card. He had to use a pin to reach in and slide under the slot to pull it back out after the transaction was complete. He just figured the machine was defective. The next day his account was wiped clean. As was his mothers and sisters who uses the same ATM at that branch. Apparently somebody attached their own card tray into the ATM machine, basically a slot that fits inside or on top of the regular card entry ont he machine and collects all your information, pin number, account details, etc and produces a copy so that the thieves can than return and withdraw your entire account balance with the information stored from your card into their device. I'm sure they'll catch whoever did this and I'm sure you'll find that you were not the only victim.

Good luck.

 

[Paul_Medenwaldt]

I wish the bank and or police let the customer know who did it and what kind of punishment they received.

In 1996 i left my ATM card in a ATM the night of the KISS reunion show I was going to (I was pretty jazzed that night). The next people at the ATM took the card and went to Wal-Mart and a gas station and charged just over $400.

At the time my bank was Norwest (now Wells Fargo) and they gave me back the money within a week. I was kinda forceful with them in getting the money back into the account because it was my rent money. I felt bad for being forceful since it was my stupid fault for leaving the card in there.

I also was determined to find who took it and used it, but all they would say that the investigation was ongoing.

Paul

 

[Malcolm R]

This is why I would never, ever use one of those stand-alone ATM's that are in retail stores or mini-marts, except in case of extreme emergency. And then I would probably close that bank account the next day anyway and open a new one.

I can't believe the number of people that use those machines. Our family mini-mart is just down the street from three different banks, yet we get half a dozen people a day who walk in and ask if we have an ATM in the store (we do not).

 

[Cees Alons]

One trick you could use (but is a bit of a PITA if you have to do it all the time) to unmask those unattached machines, is to enter a wrong pin.

Every machine can pretend to know when to accept your PIN, but does it know when to reject, is the question...


Cees

 

[Christ Reynolds]

that's a pretty good idea, i will remember that.

CJ

 

[CRyan]

Could work I guess for complete BS machines, but I think the most popular mathod now is the attachment of a card reader on top of a good machine.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

It boggles the mind the lengths thieves will go to to rip someone off of their hard earned cash.

That's a great idea, Cees!

 

[Robert_Gaither]

...but just short of getting a real job!

 

[Jesse Skeen]

How do you set up a fake ATM in public (especially in a mall) and not get caught?

 

[Joe Szott]

It's not a fake ATM, it's just an add on sleeve that they insert over the keypad and card reader part. These allow the card to still pass into the machine while "piggybacking" the strip info and entered PIN # to the ATM. Later, when they remove the piggyback interface, they download all those strip and PIN #s, have a macine that spits out mag strip cards, and they go on a spree.

It's easier to create the piggyback interface for some of the 3rd party ATM machines out there as opposed to the 1st party ones attached to banks and credit unions. At least I think that's the reason.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

Please post detailed instructions for building one. LOL

So how do the banks decide to reimburse the customer? Do they just take your word for it, or do they have to find some evidence? (How do they protect themselves from some customer making a withdrawal, then saying he didn't?)

Also what happens if you withdraw cash, but the machine doesn't give you what you withdrew? Say you punch in $100, but it only spits out $60? How hard is it to get that resolved? (I've never heard of that happening, but it must have, sometime, somewhere.)

 

[BrianW]

Not as hard as you might think. They compare the amount of money left in the machine with the record of how much has been withdrawn. If they have more money than they should in the machine, then they know that customers have a legitimate beef.

This has never happened to me, and I've never heard of it happening to anyone else, however.

 

[Charles J P]

Many ATMs would have cameras that would prove your story wrong. This behavior would be similar to insurance fraud. They cant catch EVERY case, but there is a deturant in that they will send your ass to jail for a long time in some cases for abusing the system.

 

[SteveA]

This has happened to me TWICE in the past 10 years with the same bank (which I won't name). Both times, I attempted to withdraw $100, but the machine came back with a "Transaction cancelled due to timeout" error or something like that. I did not get my $100, but the money was still deducted from my account.

Needless to say, I called the bank immediately and reported it. They were very apologetic and promised to return the money to my account within 2 business days, which they did. The real kicker is this: both times, a second $100 credit was made to my account a few days later, presumably when the bank reconciled their ATM and discovered the error. So, on both occasions, I ended up $100 ahead because of the bank's errors.

Of course, I reported the extra $100 credit to them and offered the money back! Yes, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

 

[Joe Szott]

Well, you tried to return it but had a timeout error on the way past the bar right? The bank never complained...

 

[Jesse Skeen]

I had an ATM screw up when depositing a paycheck- it took the check but crashed right after that, and didn't add the money to the account. They cleared it up in a few days though.

 

[Justin Lane]

We actually had a warning circulated at work by Security about ATM scams this past week. As was mentioned the scammers will place a sleeve over the card reader which stores the card information and then use a wireless camera, usually attached to a pamphlet dispenser to record your pin number being entered.

Good luck in getting this resolved.

J

 

[Jeff D Han]

To the poster who said that you shouldn't write your whole
account # on a check to pay the monthly credit card bill-
Thanks for that information. I'll have to remember that one.
You can't be too careful these days.