RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT and

CARISA LEE

Since the ABM Task Force was rein­tro­duced by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in Sep­tem­ber, 19 per­sons have ap­peared be­fore the courts, in­clud­ing 18 non-na­tion­als.

ASP Cur­tis Julien of the Fraud Squad re­vealed this at yes­ter­day’s at the po­lice press brief­ing as he gave tips to safe­guard against ATM/card skim­ming, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons.

Julien said for the first half of the year, 542 re­ports of ATM fraud has been re­port­ed in the Port-of-Spain area alone. He said the skim­ming is di­vid­ed among four banks in T&T and there has been an in­crease in three of those banks be­tween Ju­ly and No­vem­ber.

“The chal­lenge is the ma­jor­i­ty of the per­sons who are in­volved in this ac­tiv­i­ty are non-na­tion­als. We have a num­ber of Venezue­lans, Mex­i­cans, per­sons from Eu­rope, Bul­gar­i­ans, Rus­sians, and it is our in­for­ma­tion that there are a lot of oth­er na­tion­al­i­ties as we speak who are en­gag­ing in this crime,” Julien said.

He said dai­ly peo­ple, most­ly non-na­tion­als, are skim­ming ATMs across the coun­try.

“Gen­er­al­ly they go to places that are re­mote and at late hours when there aren’t much peo­ple, “ he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Julien, from Jan­u­ary to June 2019 the re­ports of ATM fraud di­vid­ed among the four banks—Sco­tia, RBC, Re­pub­lic and FCB.

“We had a de­crease in three of those banks be­tween Ju­ly and No­vem­ber since the in­cep­tion of the ABM Task Force. This task force op­er­ates in­de­pen­dent­ly to de­crease this type of ac­tiv­i­ty, “ he said.

Ju­lian said card slug hold­ers are used by skim­mers as an over­lay to cap­ture in­for­ma­tion. This works with a plas­tic pan­el placed at top of the screen to make it look like an ATM. A wi-fi cam­era is at­tached and a hand­held skim­mer records all the card hold­er’s in­for­ma­tion.

Julien’s ad­vice is to al­ways keep your eyes on your card be­cause once you take your eyes off, all your in­for­ma­tion can be record­ed.

He said if the trans­ac­tion failed, the cashier claimed the bat­tery is low or that there is an er­ror, take a re­ceipt and con­tact their bank im­me­di­ate­ly.

Skim­mers al­so rig the ma­chine by plac­ing oth­er com­po­nents in it and ac­cord­ing to Julien, this is hard to de­tect be­cause it looks nor­mal. And will work on any card that has a mag­net­ic strip, such as a Massy stores card or a Star­bucks card.

The ABM Task Force re­cent­ly made a break­through when a Cana­di­an cit­i­zen of Sri Lankan na­tion­al­i­ty was de­tained. He said T&T is be­ing tar­get­ed by non-na­tion­als be­cause this coun­try is seen as hav­ing low se­cu­ri­ty when it comes to bank­ing. Julien added that the peo­ple who mas­ter­mind these ac­tiv­i­ties nev­er do the har­vest­ing.

Oth­er skim­ming com­po­nents in­clude a card read­er and key­pad guards and the speak­ers on the ABM’s can al­so be rigged.

He ad­vised that cit­i­zens to do phys­i­cal checks, in­clud­ing tug­ging at the card slot, phys­i­cal­ly check­ing com­po­nents on the ATM and us­ing an­oth­er ma­chine if there are no key­pad guards. Skim­ming de­vices are usu­al­ly at­tached dur­ing ear­ly morn­ings and late evenings as there must be a free traf­fic flow for the skim­mers to es­cape. They don’t leave their de­vices in one lo­ca­tion for longer than 24-hours.

What to look out for:

° A card slot over­lay—a green com­po­nent which is put in an ATM to cap­ture in­for­ma­tion from a bank card.

° Hand­held skim­mers are used most­ly at point of sale ma­chines and con­tain a mem­o­ry card to store a card hold­er’s in­for­ma­tion.

° Im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact your bank if told the trans­ac­tion has failed, there is a trans­ac­tion er­ror, or the bat­tery low so they have to use an­oth­er ma­chine.

° If you have on­line bank­ing, mon­i­tor your ac­count im­me­di­ate­ly to en­sure all trans­ac­tions are au­tho­rised.