The Mattancherry police have arrested two persons in an intriguing case of attempted ATM fraud mired in drama.
The arrested were identified Amin Khan, 42, of Alwar district in Rajasthan, and Riyaju Khan, 27, of Palwal district in Haryana.
The drama unfolded on Wednesday morning at the SBI ATM adjoining the Kalvathy branch. Shortly after the two accused had entered the ATM, they allegedly covered the CCTV camera, the image of which was flashed inside the adjoining branch, alerting bank officials at 8.53 a.m.
They immediately sent security guards to the ATM and the police said the duo took flight seeing the guards. However, they were chased down by the security guards with the help of local people. They were found to have withdrawn ₹10,000 from their accounts.
On initial interrogation, they reportedly told the police that while withdrawing money from their accounts, they would leave one of the currency notes dispensed by the ATM machine untouched. “This note, left at the dispenser, would be taken back by the machine. Then they would call the bank authorities and complain about their account getting debited without the ATM actually dispensing the cash. The bank would then refund the entire amount that was sought to be withdrawn,” according to the police.
“Bank officials told that this was no longer possible. However, they confirmed that there was another way of pulling off such a fraud by manipulating the machines when its cash chest was just about to dispense the currency notes,” said V.S. Navas, Station House Officer, Mattancherry.
That way, they would get the cash as they were able to convince bank officials that the currencies were not dispensed with owing to a system failure. In such cases, the bank invariably refund the money. SBI officials were not available to clarify whether such a ploy was possible.
“We will have to subject the accused to more detailed interrogation to verify whether they had been adopting this second method. Whatever be the ploy, their accounts were getting credited with money of late,” Mr. Navas said.
They had been on the road since June 10 and had reached Chennai the next day. Since then they are suspected to have pulled off 13 ATM frauds across Tamil Nadu, Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi. Mr. Navas said that for the past six months they had been making their living through fraudulent ways.
The police took them to a lodge near the South railway station where they claimed to have been staying. They will be produced before the court on Thursday.
The police have registered a case invoking IPC Section 379 (theft), 511 (Punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or other imprisonment) and 454 (Lurking house-trespass or house-breaking in order to commit offence punishable with imprisonment)