Bank officials tamper with ATM data, steal 12 lakh

Two Axis Bank officials have been accused of tampering with the technical configuration of two ATM machines and fraudulently withdrawing Rs 12 lakh in Bihar’s Vaishali district.

A case has been registered against the two bank officials - Abhishek Singh and Prabhunath Shukla - for defalcating Rs 12 lakh from ATM machines in Sarai and Sonepur in Vaishali.
The branch manager of Axis Bank, Subhash Kumar,has lodged an FIR against the two after the case came to light while going through various cash verification processes including account verification and internal audit.

According to the FIR, Abhishek and Prabhunath had been assigned the task of refilling the two ATMs at Sarai and Sonepur with Rs 15 lakh taken from Hajipur branch. But the duo tampered with the main balance of the ATM at Sarai by displaying zero balance in the ATM and producing a manual dispense report.

“The actual dispense of Rs 100 denomination of notes was 447, but the accused had increased the dispense to 2447. The actual dispense of Rs 500 denomination notes was 848, which they also tampered with and changed to 2848,” said the FIR.

That is how they decamped with 2000x Rs100 (which is Rs 2 lakh) and 2000xRs500 (which is Rs 10,00,000) adding up to Rs 12 lakh. The Branch Manager, in his police complaint, has also said the two accused had tampered the operational guidelines of ATM handling for stealing the amount. The Hajipur police have, meanwhile, started an investigation into the case.

Another incident

An unsuccessful attempt was made by some unidentified miscreants to break open the cash vault and steal money from the Punjab National Bank ATM in Darbhanga.

The criminals succeeded in unlocking the mechanised gate of the equipment and got inside the unmanned ATM enclosure but could not unbolt the cash vault.