Three Romanian nationals have been identified as prime suspects in the hi-tech bank fraud cases involving SBI and SBT ATMs in Thiruvananthapuram even as several bank customers have lost lakhs of rupees.
Kerala police have put out photo look-out notices of the suspects, whose video shots have been captured from the ATM camera in Thiruvananthapuram. Kerala police have set up a 40-member team for probing the serial ATM fraud. On Tuesday, a battery of investigators, including cyber experts, have set off to Mumbai, from where the money was withdrawn.
“We are also in touch with Interpol, besides alerting CBI and other national agencies, regarding the hi-tech bank fraud, involving foreign nationals,” police inspector general Manoj Abraham, who heads the special investigation team, told FE.
The police quantifies the initial losses at Rs 2.5 lakh. Although unofficially 50 cases have been reported, probably suffering a loss of about Rs 4.5 lakh, but only 20 people have filed police complaints so far.
The busted ATM racket came to light in a slow but rapidly aggregating trickle of complaints to the banks that customers in Thiruvananthapuram got phone alerts that large amounts of money had been withdrawn from their accounts via ATMs in Mumbai and Delhi.
Most of these withdrawals occurred, reportedly at about 1 pm on Sunday. Losses per customer are estimated to be in the range of Rs 10,000 to Rs 35,000.
“Although we have found the attached device only from one particular ATM, we gather that the suspected foreign nationals were in town for the last 10 days. They seem to have visited the ATM between June 30 and July 10,” says city policy commissioner G Sparjan Kumar