Most of the ATM skimmers I’ve profiled in this blog are comprised of parts designed to mimic and to fit on top of existing cash machine components, such as card acceptance slots or PIN pads. But sometimes, skimmer thieves find success by swapping out ATM parts with compromised look-alikes.
On May 16, 2009, a company representative from ATM maker Diebold was servicing an ATM at a Bank of America branch in Sun Valley, Calif., when he discovered a skimming device and a camera that were attached to the machine. The technician took pictures of the camera and card skimmer (click picture at right for larger image), and then went into the branch to contact his supervisor.
But when the Diebold employee returned, the camera had been removed from the ATM, suggesting that the skimmer scammer was lurking somewhere nearby and had swooped in to salvage his remaining equipment. This is similar to what happened when an ATM technician discovered a compromised ATM a year ago.
Investigators of the present scam learned that the thief had somehow pried off the plastic cover of the ATM’s card acceptance slot and replaced it with an identical, compromised version that included a modified magnetic stripe reader and a flash storage device. The new card slot came with its own clear plastic face that was situated in front of the plastic one that was already attached to the ATM’s internal card reader (see picture below). The entire fraudulent device was glued onto the ATM with silicon.
Here’s a closer look at the electronics inside this handmade reader:
In other skimmer cases, ATM thieves also have been known to hack apart and modify portions of the ATM. Last week, the Palm Beach Sun Sentinel published a story about crooks in Boynton Beach, Fla. who have been cutting the bottom of ATM card readers to remove the microchip inside and replace it with their own battery-operated card reader.
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