2 engineering students held from UP for ATM thefts in Vizag

Two engineering students were arrested from Kanpur for allegedly stealing Rs 4.92 lakh cash from two ATMs of a bank here last month, police said.

They stole the cash by tampering the machines and making fraudulent transactions on the two ATMs in city's MVP Colony between June 24 and June 28, Assistant Commissioner of Police (Dwarka Zone), K Ramachandra Rao said yesterday.

The duo was identified as Swapnil Singh (22), a native of Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, and Satyarath Mishra (20) from Faizabad, UP.

They both are students of second year B.Tech (Computer Science) course at a university in Nagpur, he said.

The accused were arrested on 25 July from Kanpur and brought here yesterday, Rao said, adding that an amount of Rs 1.3 lakh cash, gold jewellery and some other items have been recovered from them.

According to police, the accused carried out the thefts by tampering with the cash dispenser of ATMs and opening its hood with a master key, rendering the unit non-functional for some time.

After the heists reported in June, cases were lodged with the MVP Colony police station.

He said based on the CCTV footage installed at the two ATM kiosks and some concrete clues like purchase of gold jewellery in the city with the same debit cards as used by the accused for transactions, police caught hold of the duo and apprehended them from Kanpur.

Rao said the two accused told the police that they got the idea to execute theft at ATM kiosks by watching a video of a similar theft that happened in Gujarat a few year ago, on YouTube.

The two men managed make a duplicate key of a model of an ATM of the particular bank.

They first tried to execute thefts in Delhi and parts of Odisha but failed. Later, they attempted it in Vizag city.

Elucidating the modus operandi, Rao said, the duo used their debit cards of the particular bank while making the transactions.

One person first swiped the debit card and entered the PIN, in the meanwhile the other used duplicate key to tamper the machine. They doctored the machine in a way that before the cash could be dispensed out the machine, it was rendered non-functional.

However, the money debited would not be reflected in the user's account. They would then open the cash tray and take out the money, he said.

In this manner, the duo made 51 attempts at the two ATM kiosks during June 24-28 and carried out the heist between 11 pm and 2 am.

In the entire process, the account holder will not suffer any loss (as money is not debited from the account), but the cash would to go missing from the ATM, subsequently resulting in a loss to the bank, the ACP said.

-PTI