Thursday, July 12, 2007

Stealing money from ATMs is taken to a more dangerous level

I've written a lot about ATM skimming -- where electronic devices are used to record payment card information, clone the information on a new card -- and steal money.

A new and much more dangerous (potentially deadly) means of stealing money from ATMs is occurring. Although most of this is happening in South Africa, it has happened recently in the United States, also.

Monica Laganparsad of the Times is reporting:

ATM blasts in KwaZulu-Natal have dramatically increased in the past two months.

During the first five months of this year seven ATM bombings were reported in the province, but in the past two months the figure has jumped to 14.

The organised crime unit of the province’s police claims to be hot on the heels of those behind the blasts.

According to the article, there have been 194 ATM bombings in South Africa this year. One man had his arms blown off, while trying to use an ATM!

I would like to have found out that ATM bombings were purely a South African phenomenon, but they are not. On July 2nd, Fox News reported a similar series of attempts in Kansas City, here.

Stealing, or attempting to break into ATMs is nothing new.

Fox News has another video, where a "Bobcat earth mover" was used to steal a ATM machine in Kansas, here.

Times (South Africa) story, here.






ATM machine after being bombed courtesy of Pat Hawks at Flickr

2 comments:

Pat said...

I across the street when the bomb on this ATM went off.
At first I thought it was just some kids playing with firecrackers or something, but after seeing a few police cars come and go, decided I needed to investigate.

It's scary that stuff like this is coming to the United States.

Ed Dickson said...

Pat - I really appreciate your perspective. I'm surprised this only made the local news.