Fergie's Tech Blog

Local: Police Track ATM Scammers

Deborah Lohse writes in The Mercury News:

Police in Los Altos are still trying to track down a ring of scammers who robbed an estimated 80 people by stealing their bank card numbers and personal identification codes from a local Arco AM/PM gas station ATM in recent months.

At least four men are believed to have orchestrated an elaborate theft discovered last month, which some victims are just now discovering in their bank statements, said Los Altos police detective Wes Beveridge. He said the thieves rigged the ATM machine at the Arco at San Antonio Road and Loucks Avenue with a code-stealing device, and then downloaded customer information during the next few weeks, or possibly months.

Then, said Beveridge, the thieves created so-called "cloned" bank cards, and went on a spree withdrawing money from banks from San Francisco to Walnut Creek from March 15 to March 21. Beveridge declined to disclose how much money the thieves stole in total, saying that is still under investigation.

But in some cases, the thieves were able to withdraw thousands of dollars from a victim's account in one day, despite bank ATM daily withdrawal limits of $300 to $700.

posted by Fergie @ 4/18/2008 05:21:00 PM