ATM fraud cases: Cops suspect role of bank insiders

SHILLONG: East Khasi Hills police will investigate whether insiders in banks are facilitating fraudulent ATM withdrawals.
District SP Davis Marak lamented that despite several advisories, even educated citizens are falling prey to fake calls and providing their confidential personal identification numbers.
Urging people to inform police about such calls immediately, Marak said there is a possibility that these callers may have some links to the bank itself and police would investigate into it.
Stating that most of the banks now are core banking, he said in majority of the cases, people who make the calls are not locals.
He also said police can usually track them to a certain point and get their general location “but it is difficult to trace their specific location and these people are professional criminals and keep on changing their phone numbers”.
In many cases, Shillong police have coordinated with police from other states and deployed teams to other states to arrest culprits.
Cash amounting to lakhs of rupees have been fraudulently stolen from ATMs of many people in Shillong in the last two years.
This has continued in the state and parts of the country despite rolling out of regular advisories by authorities.
A statistics of the East Khasi Hills police reveals that few individuals were duped for more than Rs 1.5 lakh each in many ATM fraud cases while Rs 20,000 seems to be the average amount.
The data also reveals that in 2017, there were as many as 42 cases of ATM frauds in Shillong. The modus operandi of these imposters remains the same as they call up potential victims claiming to be bank officials and ask for account details.
Till August, 22 cases of ATM frauds have been registered in Shillong and in the districts and most of the victims were senior citizens.