Another Romanian held for tampering with ATM in Kolkata

KOLKATA: Eight months after a group of 13 Romanians were arrested for robbing south Kolkata residents of lakhs by skimming their ATM cards, the detective department has picked up another Romanian suspected of installing skimming machines at a PSU bank’s ATM kiosk in the heart of Kolkata’s business district. The accused was sent to police custody for 14 days after being produced in court on Friday. Cops will now question him to get the identity of other members of the gang.



According to police sources, the victim had been installing the skimming machine for at least two consecutive days. The machine was spotted during an internal probe by the bank and later reported to police. “The probe so far show that the accused would come and install the machine in the morning and deactivate it by 9.30pm. CCTV footage, too, show that he had fitted the skimmers on April 8 and April 9,” said an officer.

“We are trying to find out if he had targeted some other ATMs. The fact that bank officials could detect the fraud at an early stage shows that a robust security arrangement is in place,” said an officer.

Of late, a series of skimming cases have been reported from Delhi and Mumbai. Kolkata Police officials have sent pictures of the accused to their counterparts in these two cities to find out if there is gang working in tandem in various Indian cities.

Kolkata Police had earlier decided to carry out physical audit of ATMs of the city, a job that’s essentially done by the banks. Lalbazar had asked all police stations to form specific teams to carry out physical examination of ATMs located within their jurisdiction. Sources said the finding of several lapses in the audits carried out by banks has helped bolster security arrangements in ATMs.

These teams, working in morning and night shifts with a total of six men, are checking whether any skimmer device has been fitted to the machine, whether there has been any attempt to hack the keyboard and whether any attempt has been made to set up pin-hole cameras. “We are concerned with the entry/exit, the physical safety of the ATM machine and the CCTV cameras,” explained a senior police officer from the detective department.

In addition to physical verification, each team liaisons with the local bank branch and ensures that all banks are implementing RBI norms. The cops are also pushing for the installation of anti-skimming devices at the ATMs. The exercises, claimed sources, has as much to do with increasing safety for customers as also to win back their confidence.