TAXILA: Three members of a gang of automated teller machine (ATM) skimmers were arrested on Monday and skimming devices and other supporting tools were recovered from them.

Talking to journalists, Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) ASP Waqas Khan said upon getting information about suspicious activities by some people at an ATM of a private bank, a police party led by Station House Officer Habibur Rehman intercepted the gang as it was fleeing towards Rawalpindi.

During search, police recovered two ATM tracking devices, chips used in hacking, batteries, two blank cards, a magnetic strip reader and other devices from their possession.

Mr Khan said the suspects were already booked and arrested by the Federal Investigation Authority (FIA) for their involvement in various ATM skimming incidents.

A case was registered against the suspects under sections 420, 468 and 471 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and they are currently being interrogated.

During investigation, they confessed to their involvement in withdrawing money from banks through hacking in various parts of the country, especially Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

They revealed that they utilised different chips to skim data of ATM users, which they later used to withdraw money from banks. It may be mentioned here that incidents of ATM skimming first appeared to have surfaced in the country in 2016. Criminals used skimmers to capture banking data off debit and credit cards.

During investigation, police found out that skimmers are physical devices that are installed over the actual ATM card slots which read the data of magnetic strips.

Crimes related to skimming have alarmingly increased in Rawalpindi and Azad Jammu and Kashmir with one bank confirming in December 2017 that over Rs10 million had been stolen from 559 of its accounts.

Published in Dawn, March 1st, 2022