An­na-Lisa Paul

Thou­sands of bank cus­tomers went in­to pan­ic mode yes­ter­day af­ter re­ports be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing that an unau­tho­rised skim­ming de­vice had been used at an au­to­mat­ed bank­ing ma­chine (ABM) in cen­tral Trinidad to al­low un­known peo­ple to hack in­to cus­tomers' ac­counts and steal mon­ey. Bank­ing sources yes­ter­day told the T&T Guardian the ABM in ques­tion be­longed to Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Richard Young, pres­i­dent of the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion (BATT), con­firmed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched. Young said BATT was con­sid­er­ing plac­ing ad­ver­tise­ments through Crime Stop­pers T&T, as sev­er­al pho­tos of sus­pect­ed per­pe­tra­tors had been ob­tained through in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

BATT urged cus­tomers to con­tact their bank im­me­di­ate­ly if their card be­comes stuck in the ABM, so that the card can be blocked. Urg­ing peo­ple to be ex­treme­ly vig­i­lant when us­ing ABMs, BATT re­mind­ed the pub­lic not to re­veal their per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber (PIN) to any­one, even peo­ple claim­ing to be bank em­ploy­ees.

Checks with the Fraud Squad re­vealed that while this was not a new type of crime, no new re­ports had been re­ferred to them for in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Of­fi­cials said while there are sev­er­al such mat­ters now en­gag­ing their at­ten­tion, banks of­ten car­ry out in­ter­nal in­quiries be­fore re­fer­ring the mat­ter for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion.

Young's as­sur­ance fol­lowed re­ports that cus­tomers had tried to use their Linx cards at the Cen­tral ABM on Fri­day morn­ing and "lost" them. The T&T Guardian learnt that the mea­sure was em­ployed by the bank as a safe­ty mech­a­nism to pro­tect cus­tomers whose cards may have been tam­pered with.

A re­lease from BATT stat­ed: "Over the last few days, the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion has be­come aware of fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty at cer­tain ABMs. The type of fraud be­ing at­tempt­ed is known as skim­ming, a process where­by fraud­sters cap­ture per­son­al in­for­ma­tion from cus­tomers' cards with the in­ten­tion of lat­er us­ing that in­for­ma­tion to ac­cess the cus­tomers' ac­counts."

Re­place­ment cards

Young said while cus­tomers will ex­pe­ri­ence some lev­el of in­con­ve­nience while re­place­ment cards are be­ing pre­pared, "Be re­as­sured, the in­dus­try is work­ing to­geth­er to min­imise the in­con­ve­nience to all cus­tomers." Young said peo­ple whose mon­ey was in fact stolen will be re­im­bursed.

How­ev­er, he warned peo­ple look­ing to make a quick buck to think twice, as banks will do in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions to de­ter­mine if the cus­tomer re­al­ly was a vic­tim of fraud. The BATT re­lease read: "In light of the re­cent oc­cur­rences, cus­tomers are ad­vised to im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact their bank should they note any sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty on their ac­counts.

"In the in­ter­est of pro­tect­ing our cus­tomers, should the banks al­so sus­pect fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty, we will im­me­di­ate­ly block those cred­it or deb­it cards on which tam­per­ing may be sus­pect­ed. Block­ing of cards will pre­vent any fur­ther trans­ac­tions on those ac­counts.

"While this ac­tion may in­con­ve­nience the af­fect­ed cus­tomers, it is nec­es­sary in or­der to pre­vent any fur­ther unau­tho­rised ac­cess to their ac­counts. "These cus­tomers whose cards are blocked will be con­tact­ed by their bank in­di­vid­u­al­ly and re­place­ment cards will be is­sued from their home branch."

From Sco­tia­bank

Af­ter BATT's me­dia re­lease about re­ports of fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty, Sco­tia­bank T&T yes­ter­day is­sued this state­ment:

"Cus­tomers af­fect­ed by the in­ci­dent out­lined above can vis­it the Sco­tia­bank branch on the Main Road in Ch­agua­nas or the one on the South­ern Main Road in Cou­va on Sat­ur­day, Ju­ly 7 (to­day), be­tween 9 am and 1 pm to have their Sco­tia­bank deb­it card re­placed. "The bank apol­o­gis­es for the in­con­ve­nience caused and con­tin­ues to have our cus­tomers' best in­ter­est in mind."

For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, call 62-Sco­tia