ATM Fraud: 6 Ukrainians placed on remand

Six Ukrainian alleged fraudsters, who reportedly took money out of ATMs without leaving any paper or digital trails, were placed on three-day remand each yesterday.

Suspects Denys Vitomskyi, 20, Volodymyr Trishchynskyi, 37, Serheii Ukrainets, 33, Oleg Shevchuk, 46, Nazarii Vozniuk, 19, Valentyn Sokolovskyi, 37, were arrested at a city hotel and at Taltola in Khilgaon on Saturday night. One of their alleged cohort is still on the run, police officials said.

Police produced the six before a Dhaka court yesterday and prayed for an eight-day remand each.

Earlier, frauds used to clone cards to withdraw cash from automated teller machines (ATMs) but the suspects used a new method that law enforcers had not seen before, said police.  

Money was withdrawn from an ATM of a private bank but no transaction was recorded in the bank’s server and no client of any bank lost money, according to police and bank sources.

Police recovered around 50 card-like objects, masks, caps, sunglasses, six mobile phones, and an iPod, from the possession of the suspects Saturday night.

The cards they had work differently, said Shahidur Rahman Ripon, additional deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s detective branch (East).

He said when the card was inserted in the ATM, the machine’s connection with the bank’s server got severed and the suspects just took money out.

This came to light when two foreigners withdrew Tk 3 lakh from a Dutch-Bangla Bank ATM booth in Badda on Friday. But no account was found charged and there was no record in the bank’s server of the transaction.

Scrutinising the closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera footage, the bank authorities saw that two foreigners wearing masks, sunglasses, and caps withdrew the money.

The bank then beefed up its security measures at all its ATM booths.

One of the foreigners was detained Saturday night when he was trying to withdraw money this way from the bank’s booth in Taltola of Khilgaon. Following his information, police later detained the other five at a hotel on Panthapath.

According to police, Vitalii Klimchuk, 31, escaped arrest when he learnt about the raid. The immigration police at airports have been alerted about him, police said.

DB sources said the suspects landed in Dhaka together on Thursday and they were supposed to leave for India.

Mashiur Rahman, head of alternate delivery channel of Dutch Bangla Bank Ltd, filed a case against the seven Ukrainians and other unnamed people with Khilgaon Police Station under the Digital Security Act Sunday night.

Abul Kashem Md Shirin, managing director of the bank, told The Daily Star, “They did not use skimming devices to clone cards. They took the money out of the ATM’s vault. We have to figure out the technology they used. Forensic experts are working on it.”