€2,000 taken from couple’s bank account

Care urged with bank cards, as couple have €2,000 withdrawn


Neill O’Neill

A CASTLEBAR couple got a nasty shock at the weekend when they discovered a substantial amount of money had been withdrawn from their bank accounts, apparently from overseas ATM machines. While their bank will replace the stolen funds – close to €2,000 between the two accounts – gardaí have urged people to be extra vigilant as criminal gangs, often foreign-based, have been known to operate in Mayo where they place skimming and recording devices on ATM machines and record pin numbers and duplicate cards.
The couple were alerted to the missing funds when one went to withdraw money on Saturday last and was told she had insufficient funds. Later, both checked their accounts online, and discovered that money had been withdrawn at brief intervals over a period of a couple of days. The couple then rang their bank’s helpline number and cancelled their cards.
“It was bizarre that both of our accounts were targeted,” the male victim told The Mayo News yesterday (Monday). “The only explanation we can think of is that we each withdrew money in succession from the same ATM machine on Castlebar’s Main Street a couple of weeks ago, and it must have been then that our details were copied.”
In-mid July a sophisticated skimming device was recovered from an ATM at the Bank of Ireland in Swinford. Five people were later arrested by Swinford Gardaí in raids in Tullamore and Mullingar, and a vast amount of cash and several skimming devices were recovered.
People should not use an ATM machine that they suspect may have been tampered with, and should make it impossible for their pin numbers to be recorded, by completely concealing the keypad on all sides, and particularly from above. In the past, thousands of euros have gone missing before the owner could realise the card was copied.
While no other incidents of skimming have been reported of late, a Garda spokesperson said that it can often be the case that several months will pass between the card being skimmed and the money being withdrawn. When this happens – particularly when the withdrawal happens in other countries – it is practically impossible to catch the perpetrators.