Holding Up The Atm: High Tech Or Low, Modern-day Bank Robbers Have Found That Crime Still Doesn’t Pay

In Manchester, Connecticut, near Hartford, two high-tech bandits set up a dummy ATM in the Buckland Hills Mall and used it to gather card codes and PINs from people trying to use the machine. The two men planned their caper with care, setting up a phony institution called Guarantee Trust Company and leasing a small stand-alone Fujitsu unit from an independent supplier. Then, on April 24,1993, dressed as workmen, they and another conspirator wheeled their machine into a heavily trafficked area of the mall and plugged it in. To make sure that people would use it, they disabled a nearby legitimate ATM by inserting a plastic card covered with glue.

The criminals’ ATM did not dispense cash. It had been reprogrammed to record the data from inserted cards before flashing an out-ofservice message. After two weeks the criminals removed the machine and retired to their hideaway. Using an encoder of the type commonly found in banks, they transferred the purloined account information onto plastic cards, which they then used to withdraw cash from ATMs up and down the East Coast.

At the Savings Bank of Manchester, however, a manager became suspicious when she noticed clusters of withdrawals coming in from odd sites. She contacted the cards’ owners and discovered that they had not made the withdrawals. The bank then notified the U.S. Secret Service. Using security-camera pictures, it tracked down and arrested the two masterminds in late June.

In Sacramento, California, on October 14,1995, a manager of the Greenhaven branch of First Interstate Bank is thought to have secretly let her boyfriend into a side door near the ATM. According to the FBI, the boyfriend avoided surveillance cameras and helped himself to $90,000 in cash. The couple then disappeared and have yet to be found, though their identities are known. The boyfriend had previous arrest records in Arizona and Idaho on narcotics and burglary charges.

In another case, two men in Stockton, California, stole a flatbed truck, intending to use it to liberate an ATM from the wall of a local credit union. At four o’clock in the morning on May 2,1993, they rammed the truck backward into the credit union, crashing through the wall and pushing the ATM six! feet into the building.

When they tried to lift the ATM onto the truck bed, they found it much too heavy, so they hastily chained it to the back Ofx the truck and began dragging it down the street. They were driving at an estimated 40 miles per hour when the chain broke.

The ATM skittered across a lane of traffic, jumped a curb, crossed a parking lot, and crashed through the front wall of a Jack in the Box restaurant. The impact knocked out several booths and tables. Fortunately, since it was fourthirty in the morning, no one was inside the building.

After losing the ATM, the two burglars abandoned the truck and fled on foot. They were apprehended several days later. Today most stand-alone ATMS are equipped not only with alarms but also with Global Positioning System beacons, which can broadcast the ATM’s location if it is stolen.