SBI duped of Rs 4.5 cr after miscreants tamper with ATMs

Miscreants have allegedly duped the State Bank Of India of around Rs 4.5 crore over seven months by apparently tampering with the cash dispensing shutters of ATMs in Odisha's Sambalpur district, a police officer said on Monday.

Twenty-five cards of different banks were used 4,630 times at nine SBI ATMs in Sambalpur and Rengali towns between September 2020 and March 2021. The unidentified robbers used 'exit shutter manipulation fraud' to siphon off the money after manually tampering with the cash dispensing shutters of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs). The miscreants would insert their cards and once the PIN and requested amount had been keyed in, the machine would authenticate the card and the process of cash dispensation would begin.

The robbers would then jam the ATM's cash shutter while it was dispensing money, prompting it to generate an error message. After collecting money from the ATMs, they would claim the same amount from the bank alleging non-receipt of cash. The money was then refunded by the SBI, the police officer said. The fraudulent transactions came to the fore after the chief manager of SBI's Main Branch in Sambalpur town filed a complaint regarding the fraud at the Cyber Police Station, an officer said.

''A case has been registered and an investigation is underway,'' Cyber Police Station inspector Padmasini Meher said.

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