Trinidad sees rise in ATM fraud

Ag. Cpl. Verne DuBois displays an ATM speaker panel with a cell phone and extra batteries attached used by fraudsters to record bank card Information and pin numbers and make duplicate cards. Looking on are Ag. Supt. Wayne Mystar, centre, and ASP Curtis Julien

(Trinidad Guardian) Since the ABM Task Force was rein­tro­duced by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in Sep­tem­ber, 19 per­sons have ap­peared be­fore the courts, in­clud­ing 18 non-na­tion­als.

ASP Cur­tis Julien of the Fraud Squad re­vealed this at yes­ter­day’s at the po­lice press brief­ing as he gave tips to safe­guard against ATM/card skim­ming, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons.

Julien said for the first half of the year, 542 re­ports of ATM fraud has been re­port­ed in the Port-of-Spain area alone. He said the skim­ming is di­vid­ed among four banks in T&T and there has been an in­crease in three of those banks be­tween Ju­ly and No­vem­ber.

“The chal­lenge is the ma­jor­i­ty of the per­sons who are in­volved in this ac­tiv­i­ty are non-na­tion­als. We have a num­ber of Venezue­lans, Mex­i­cans, per­sons from Eu­rope, Bul­gar­i­ans, Rus­sians, and it is our in­for­ma­tion that there are a lot of oth­er na­tion­al­i­ties as we speak who are en­gag­ing in this crime,” Julien said.

He said dai­ly peo­ple, most­ly non-na­tion­als, are skim­ming ATMs across the coun­try.

“Gen­er­al­ly they go to places that are re­mote and at late hours when there aren’t much peo­ple, “ he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Julien, from Jan­u­ary to June 2019 the re­ports of ATM fraud di­vid­ed among the four banks—Sco­tia, RBC, Re­pub­lic and FCB.

“We had a de­crease in three of those banks be­tween Ju­ly and No­vem­ber since the in­cep­tion of the ABM Task Force. This task force op­er­ates in­de­pen­dent­ly to de­crease this type of ac­tiv­i­ty, “ he said.

Ju­lian said card slug hold­ers are used by skim­mers as an over­lay to cap­ture in­for­ma­tion. This works with a plas­tic pan­el placed at top of the screen to make it look like an ATM. A wi-fi cam­era is at­tached and a hand­held skim­mer records all the card hold­er’s in­for­ma­tion.

Julien’s ad­vice is to al­ways keep your eyes on your card be­cause once you take your eyes off, all your in­for­ma­tion can be record­ed.

He said if the trans­ac­tion failed, the cashier claimed the bat­tery is low or that there is an er­ror, take a re­ceipt and con­tact their bank im­me­di­ate­ly.

Skim­mers al­so rig the ma­chine by plac­ing oth­er com­po­nents in it and ac­cord­ing to Julien, this is hard to de­tect be­cause it looks nor­mal. And will work on any card that has a mag­net­ic strip, such as a Massy stores card or a Star­bucks card.

The ABM Task Force re­cent­ly made a break­through when a Cana­di­an cit­i­zen of Sri Lankan na­tion­al­i­ty was de­tained. He said T&T is be­ing tar­get­ed by non-na­tion­als be­cause this coun­try is seen as hav­ing low se­cu­ri­ty when it comes to bank­ing. Julien added that the peo­ple who mas­ter­mind these ac­tiv­i­ties nev­er do the har­vest­ing.

Oth­er skim­ming com­po­nents in­clude a card read­er and key­pad guards and the speak­ers on the ABM’s can al­so be rigged.

He ad­vised that cit­i­zens to do phys­i­cal checks, in­clud­ing tug­ging at the card slot, phys­i­cal­ly check­ing com­po­nents on the ATM and us­ing an­oth­er ma­chine if there are no key­pad guards. Skim­ming de­vices are usu­al­ly at­tached dur­ing ear­ly morn­ings and late evenings as there must be a free traf­fic flow for the skim­mers to es­cape. They don’t leave their de­vices in one lo­ca­tion for longer than 24-hours.

What to look out for:

° A card slot over­lay—a green com­po­nent which is put in an ATM to cap­ture in­for­ma­tion from a bank card.

° Hand­held skim­mers are used most­ly at point of sale ma­chines and con­tain a mem­o­ry card to store a card hold­er’s in­for­ma­tion.

° Im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact your bank if told the trans­ac­tion has failed, there is a trans­ac­tion er­ror, or the bat­tery low so they have to use an­oth­er ma­chine.

° If you have on­line bank­ing, mon­i­tor your ac­count im­me­di­ate­ly to en­sure all trans­ac­tions are au­tho­rised.