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Thursday, May 29, 2025

TTPS: Bank customers robbed of more than $1m

by

697 days ago
20230702
Senior Sup Kurt Simon

Senior Sup Kurt Simon

Shastri Boodan

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

joshua.seemu­n­gal@gua­di­an.co.tt

In the last 18 months, cit­i­zens have been robbed of more than $1 mil­lion in cash just af­ter leav­ing fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions—bank branch­es and ATMs—ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the T&To Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

More than $580,000 was stolen in 18 in­ci­dents this year, while $509,245 was stolen in 25 in­ci­dents for 2022, to­talling more than $1.06 mil­lion. In ten sep­a­rate in­ci­dents, peo­ple were robbed of $50,000 or more.

The sin­gle largest rob­bery dur­ing that pe­ri­od re­sult­ed in the vic­tim los­ing $100,000 out­side the Masjid-Ul-Mu­taque­en Mosque on Munroe Road in April 2022.

The area with the most re­port­ed rob­beries out­side of fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions is San Juan where there have been eight rob­beries. Trinci­ty, Val­sayn and St Au­gus­tine have had five rob­beries each. Of those, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine cam­pus had three rob­beries, while Trinci­ty Mall and Val­park had two rob­beries each.

Oth­er ar­eas where rob­beries oc­curred were Ch­agua­nas and San Fer­nan­do with four rob­beries each. Two took place at an ATM lo­cat­ed at Cipero Street.

Mean­while, Tu­na­puna, Curepe, Pe­nal, Mar­aval, Ari­ma, Wood­brook, Port-of-Spain, Glen­coe and Point Lisas had one re­port­ed rob­bery each dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

As re­cent­ly as mid-June, a 36-year-old Bon Air Gar­dens res­i­dent with­drew $9,000 from a bank lo­cat­ed off Trinci­ty Cen­tral Road. Short­ly af­ter, he went to the East Gates Mall car park to de­posit the cash in­to an­oth­er bank. How­ev­er, when he parked his ve­hi­cle, he was robbed by two armed men.

He was robbed of $10,000 in cash as well as a cell phone.

Spe­cial TTPS team for rob­beries

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Curt Si­mon said TTPS an­a­lysts are “drilling down deep in­to” the up­surge of rob­beries tar­get­ing bank cus­tomers.

The Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed DCP Si­mon for an up­date, and he said the TTPS has made a num­ber of ar­rests re­cent­ly in re­la­tion to the string of rob­beries. He ac­knowl­edged that the TTPS re­mains con­cerned, but said a spe­cial team is act­ing based on a da­ta and in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven project. He said the project start­ed around a month ago and is yield­ing re­sults.

“We have made some ar­rests, but again I don’t have any da­ta in front of me to sup­ply you. We have made some sig­nif­i­cant ar­rests, and per­sons have been charged. I think even up to this week, a per­son was ar­rest­ed. Some­one was ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to the last one we had which was when $100,000 was tak­en from some­one,” DCP Si­mon said.

Asked if the in­for­ma­tion gath­ered by the TTPS sug­gests that staff from banks or oth­er fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions might be in­volved, he said he can­not an­swer ques­tions re­lat­ed to the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions at this time. He said, how­ev­er, that the in­for­ma­tion they’ve been gath­er­ing is pay­ing off and sev­er­al peo­ple have been charged in re­la­tion to the crimes.

“We ex­pect to see a re­duc­tion in these crimes, but that doesn’t mean that be­cause we see a re­duc­tion, in­ves­ti­ga­tions will come to a halt. The in­ves­ti­ga­tions will be com­plet­ed un­til we are sat­is­fied that we have erad­i­cat­ed this prob­lem or re­duced it sig­nif­i­cant­ly,” he sought to as­sure the pub­lic.

The Sun­day Guardian al­so ap­proached the com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­part­ments of sev­er­al banks for com­ment but was re­ferred to a re­lease is­sued by the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BATT) ear­li­er this month.

The BATT said it re­mains con­cerned about re­cent re­ports of rob­beries that seem to be re­lat­ed to cash with­drawals from var­i­ous fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions. The as­so­ci­a­tion said it has a ze­ro-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy for any type of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and has al­ways placed cus­tomers’ se­cu­ri­ty as its num­ber one pri­or­i­ty.

“Our banks have in­sti­tut­ed sev­er­al safe­ty mea­sures in­clud­ing im­prove­ments to the in­ter­nal tech­no­log­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, as well as col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Trinidad & To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) through BATT’s In­ter-Bank Se­cu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee to ap­pre­hend any in­di­vid­ual who en­gages in any type of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty against the Banks or its cus­tomers.

“With re­gards to the new fraud ty­pol­o­gy, there have been no shim­ming in­ci­dents across all banks in Trinidad & To­ba­go. The new chip tech­nol­o­gy rolled out by all mem­ber banks pre­vents the suc­cess­ful swip­ing of cards lo­cal­ly,” the re­lease stat­ed.

Of­fer­ing ad­vice, the as­so­ci­a­tion urged cus­tomers to, as much as pos­si­ble, use on­line bank­ing plat­forms; ver­i­fy the trans­ac­tion amount be­fore us­ing their card; shield their PINs when us­ing point-of-sale ma­chines and ATMs; not share their PINs and avoid leav­ing deb­it or cred­it cards un­at­tend­ed or out of your sight; Avoid mak­ing pay­ments to clear any pack­ages promised to you through in­ter­ac­tion with per­sons on What­sApp; and to avoid click­ing on links in un­so­licit­ed emails,” the state­ment said.

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