‘Bank staff’s involvement in ATM skimming fraud suspected’

F.P. Report

KARACHI: Speaking in a seminar held at the Institute of Bankers Pakistan, State Bank of Pakistan officials said that clues gathered during an ongoing investigation into an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) skimming scam have led to the revelation of the bank staff’s involvement in the fraud.

At the session that was held to discuss ATM scamming and methods to prevent it, the State Bank’s head of payment systems, Sohail Jawad said that around 100 ATM cards were compromised in November 2017 as a consequence of which the customers of 24 banks lost around 37 million rupees.

The question remains that how foreign transactions were allowed by the banks on compromised cards, asked Jawad.

Officials from the State Bank also informed that a free SMS service would soon be introduced for all ATM transactions, with the help of which customers will be alerted in cases of unauthorized access.

Sharing their advice on prevention of such frauds, cyber security experts stressed that customers should make an effort and hide the keypad while entering their ATM passcodes.

Falling prey to an ATM skimming fraud earlier, hundreds of citizens in Pakistan had lost millions of rupees in December 2017.

Following complaints that were registered with the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) by hundreds of banking customers across the country, an investigation was launched into the fraud.

The matter is currently being investigated by the FIA under the Cyber Crimes Act.

While ATM skimming can be regarded as an identity theft for debit cards, scammers use different techniques to record the victim’s PIN code.

Some of the techniques used by fraudsters to access a customer’s bank account include sticking a fake card-reader on the ATM, placing a fake keypad on the machine to steal his or her PIN code, and the use of a hidden camera that records the PIN code entered by the customer.