time of the transaction. Then the video camera in the van would be synchronized to that time. As customers used the machine, the camera would be locked on the keypad and would record their finger movements. The thieves weren't interested in seeing you, no matter how good-looking you were. They were interested in your fingers. By taping them, they could tell what your PIN was.
After they retrieved their cash, nine out of ten of the people using the machine did the typical thing: they took a quick look at their receipt and tossed it into the wastebasket. At machines where the bank hadn't provided a wastebasket, the crooks were courteous enough to furnish one of their own. At the end of the day, one of the thieves hustled over to the machine with a garbage bag, emptied the receipts into the bag and took them with him.
When they got back to their house, they dumped the receipts on a table and began to sort them by the time stamped on them. They then stuck the videotape into their VCR, played the tape of all those fingers, and matched the receipts to the fingers. In that way, they attached the account numbers printed on the receipts to their respective PIN numbers. The beauty of the receipts was that they allowed the thieves to see the balances in the accounts. Oh, this guy's got fourteen dollars left. They'd throw it away. This guy's got five hundred dollars. That's a keeper.
Once they had the account numbers and PINs they wanted, they went to an office supply store and bought some blank credit cards. With a hand embosser, also easily acquired, they encoded the cards with the account numbers, took them to ATM machines, and began withdrawing money.
This was one case at one bank, but it goes on all the time.
There's no denying that the swift growth in ATMs has revolutionized consumer banking. But ever since their introduction in 1973, ATMs have been viewed as attractive targets by criminals, luring everyone from brazen armed robbers to crafty scam artists. Despite all this, I think that ATMs are pretty safe, a lot safer than your checkbook. Generally, you can't withdraw more than two hundred dollars in a single day from any one account, which is an effective safeguard. In addition, an account holder is only liable for up to fifty dollars if an account and PIN are compromised, and banks typically waive that. ATMs, therefore, are not the problem that fraudulent checks and embezzlement are. Still, the ATM machine is how we get our money every day, and wherever there's money, criminals lurk.
There have actually been some astounding sums withdrawn with a single card in just a few days of frenzied activity. A woman in Gresham, Oregon, was at a high school football game on a Friday night. She had left her bank card in her purse in her van out in the parking lot. Two men and a woman who were working together broke in and stole it. Leaving it there was mistake No. 1. Mistake No. 2 was that she had scribbled down her PIN number on her Social Security card, which was also in her purse. The thieves, I'm sure, were quite thankful that she was so obliging. They wasted no time in satisfying their needs.
Within minutes, they were at a bank machine a few blocks from the football field. Before the next series of downs was completed, they had made their first withdrawal. They kept on going, traveling at a hundred miles through five counties, stopping pretty much every time they spied an ATM. Even though the standard limit on a withdrawal in a given day on one card is generally a few hundred dollars, there had been a computer program change at the credit union where the victim banked, and there was no limit at all on that particular weekend. In a 54 hour time frame, the thieves made 724 withdrawals from 48 bank machines. They collected $346,770. Talk about being lucky. Before they were caught, largely because of hidden cameras at five of the machines, they even managed to find the time to buy a new pickup truck. So you can see why it's vital for banks to keep a lid on how much cash can be withdrawn.
THINKING OF GLUE
In terms of ingenuity, one of my favorite ATM scams took place at the Miami Airport. Like a lot of cash machines, the ATMs there used to have little revolving