ATM crooks in San Francisco have a clever trick: they glue down the ENTER, CANCEL and CLEAR buttons on an ATM, and wait for customers to go into the bank to complain. The fraudsters then complete the transaction using the on-screen equivalents — the victim having already keyed in a PIN — and skip away before the victim comes back out.
Since January, there have been four such thefts in the Richmond District alone, Corriea said.
"And you have to figure it's not always reported to us," Corriea said.
Often, bank customers don't notice the thefts for days, San Francisco police spokesman Officer Albie Esparza said.
"Best thing for consumers is to monitor their bank account," Esparza said.
There are several nonviolent ways crooks can steal cash from ATMs, but the glue method is less risky, Corriea said.
A thief caught applying glue to an ATM would be slapped with a misdemeanor vandalism charge, but likely won't face a felony fraud charge because it isn't easy to prove that the crook intended to steal, Corriea said.
Glue-gun goons target unwary ATM users
(via Schneier)
(Image: Glue, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from kodomut's photostream)
- Flashmob of ATM crooks scores $9 million in 49 cities – Boing Boing
- Local man finds card skimmer on ATM – Boing Boing
- ATM skimmer — could you spot it in the wild? – Boing Boing
- ATM skimmers: man, these things are scary – Boing Boing
- ATM user interface fail – Boing Boing
- Commercially available ATM skimmers – Boing Boing
- ATM skimmer that doesn't require any modifications to the ATM …
