Pub. 3 2014 Issue 7

l e a d i n g a d v o c a t e f o r t h e b a n k i n g i n d u s t r y i n k a n s a s 12 SECURITY OFFICER’S BY-WORD ATM CASH THEFTS By Charles M. Towle, KBS President Kansas Bankers Surety, Topeka, Kansas O NE SATURDAY MORNING, A customer reported to the bank that the drive-up ATM was not working. The bank checked the ATM, which displayed an error code indicating the ATM was out of money. A look inside revealed that it was indeed out of money. In fact, the dispensing canisters were missing from the safe as well as the cash they contained. The investigation revealed no signs of tampering, neither on the access panel lock nor on the safe combination dial. The canisters and money had just disappeared. A review of the video camera provided a partial explanation. The ATM records showed that the last successful transaction had occurred at 1:10 a.m. At 1:23 a.m., a car could be seen parking and turning its lights off across the parking lot. A shadowy image of a person could be seen leaving the car and moving out of view of the camera. The person approached the machine from the side, and only his sweatshirt from below the shoulders to his waist could be seen on the video. Within a few seconds, the access panel was opened. Thirty seconds later, the safe door could be seen opening. Within a few more seconds, all three money canisters were removed, the safe was closed and the access panel was closed. The theft took about one minute. Only two bank employees had access to the safe combination. The investigation revealed that they could not have taken the money. The ATM manufacturer was called to investigate the matter. Their investigator explained that the alarm was not designed to be triggered on this style of ATM when the access panel was opened. No alarm is triggered if the normal combination is used to open the safe. It was learned that the manufacturer did not make access panel keys and locks unique. In fact, many ATMs of the same model open with the same key. The manufacturer told the bank that this was the twenty-second similar incident reported to them in five years. It is improbable that 22 different bank employees working for 22 different banks decided to steal using the same method. The manufacturer came up with a theory: one of the thousands of people with a key to the access panel lock may have perpetrated the crime. Of course, no one had access to the 22 different ATM safe combinations. Bank personnel were the only ones with the combination for each bank’s ATM safe. Several videos showed the safes were opened in only seconds, making it impossible for someone to be trying different combination codes. The manufacturer speculated that if the combination lock was not locked properly, the crook could quickly open the safe and remove the canisters of cash. A test of this hypothesis revealed that the combination turned slightly as the safe was closed and that the safe appeared locked. However, a slight turn of the dial allowed the safe to be reopened without using the combination. A crook likely continues to look in ATMs for safes that are not properly locked. Looking in an ATM does not set off alarms. There are no signs of forced entry. If the crook looks in an ATM that was locked correctly, he simply relocks the access panel and leaves no trace of his intrusion. If the crook looks in enough ATMs, he eventually finds an ATM that has a combination dial that was not properly spun when the ATM was locked. He then steals the cash canisters in seconds. To prevent this type of theft from happening at your bank, you can change your alarm system so that your employees must enter a deactivation code before opening the ATM access panel and/or safe. You can also install a new lock with a unique key on the ATM access panel. Of utmost importance, every bank should train all of its employees to turn the combination dial at least one full turn after locking the ATM safe. Proper locking of the ATM safe can help prevent this type of loss at your bank. For more information, please give us a call at (785) 228-0000.