Orissa: The State Bank Of India endured loss of around Rs 4.5 crore over seven months due to alleged tampering of cash dispensing shutters of ATMs in Odisha’s Sambalpur district, a police officer said on Monday.
Preliminary investigations revealed around 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.
As per the footage extracted, the miscreants used exit shutter manipulation fraud’ to siphon off the money after manually tampering with the cash dispensing shutters of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs).
Reports state the robbers 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. Subsequently, they would jam the ATM’s cash shutter while it was dispensing money, prompting it to generate an error message. Following which, they would claim the same amount from the bank alleging non-receipt of cash.
The alleged siphoning 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.