ATM fraud never seen before; 6 foreigners held

Money was withdrawn from an automated teller machine (ATM) of a private bank booth, but neither any transaction recorded in the bank server nor any money was deducted from any client’s account – a new kind of fraud surfaced after police arrested six Ukranian nationals in Dhaka in this connection.

They were arrested from a city hotel at Panthapath on Saturday, Shahidur Rahman Ripon, additional deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s detective branch (east), told The Daily Star.

According to police and bank sources, two foreign nationals withdrew Tk 3 lakh from a Dutch-Bangla Bank ATM booth on Friday.

The security guard at the booth informed bank authorities, who checked the CCTV footage and saw that two men were withdrawing the money. No account of that transaction has been recorded in bank server.

The same men then went to another booth in Khilgaon on Saturday, wearing masks and caps. The security guard became suspicious and called locals for help, who were able to catch one of them.

Police raided the hotel based on information provided by him and arrested the six alleged fraudsters. One member of the fraud ring is still on the run, said the official.

The detainees are: Denys Vitomskyi, 20, Volodymyr Trishchynskyi, 37, Serheii Ukrainets, 33, Oleg Shevchuk, 46, Nazarii Vozniuk, 19, Valentyn Sokolovskyi, 37.

He said seven people came from Ukraine together. Among them, one Vitalii Klimchuk, 31, escaped when he learned about the raid. The airport immigration has been alerted, he said.

Shahidur said, the card found with them works differently. As the card was inserted into the ATM machine, connection between the booth and the bank’s server got disconnected. Then they withdrew money like their way.

Such fraud was never seen before, he added.

A Dhaka court today placed the six on a three-day remand each after police produced them before it in connection with a case filed under the Digital Security Act.

‘NEW TECHNOLOGY USED’

Abul Kashem Md Shirin, managing director of Dutch-Bangla Bank, said the fraudsters used a new kind of technology to withdraw cash from ATM.

“They did not use skimming devices to clone cards. They took the money out of the ATM’s vault,” he told The Daily Star yesterday. “We have to find out the technology they used. Forensic experts are working on it,” he said.