Consider reimbursement, banks told

CHENNAI: An action plan drawn up by the Central Crime Branch to deal with ATM fraud cases calls upon commercial banks to “consider reimbursing the lost amount in deserving cases, after personally satisfying themselves of the veracity of the complaint”.The total number of complaints lodged by ATM users with the CCB now stands at 247, with customers of Canara Bank topping the list at 93.The latest development comes after the second and final brainstorming session held by CCB sleuths with 58 representatives of private and nationalised banks on November 17. Subsequent to the meeting, the CCB’s strategy is to furnish details of complaints received from the victims of credit/debit card fraud to the banks concerned. The banks, in turn, would collect all complaints pertaining to them and explore the possibility of preferring a unified complaint facilitating in-depth investigation.The move follows the avalanche of ATM fraud complaints received by the CCB. “We have received 247 petitions so far,” assistant commissioner, CCB (bank fraud), A John Rose told Express. “The process of filing FIR on each complaint will be an elaborate process. Hence, we have asked banks to give a unified complaint on the basis of details supplied by us,” he said. Most importantly, the police have asked banks to consider reimbursing the lost amount in “deserving cases” after personal verification of the complaint.While details of 1,000-odd stolen data belonging to customers of foreign banks such as Central Bank of USA and Barclays were relayed to the U S embassy, CCB sleuths raised the issue with local institutions.Subsequently, Canara Bank provided a list of its 29 “vulnerable” ATM centres from where the fraudsters had purportedly stolen the credit/debit card data of not only its customers, but also those of other banks. “We have asked banks to block the data stolen from the 29 compromised Canara Bank ATM centres,” Rose said.In this connection, he pointed to the initiative taken by Indian Bank. The bank analysed all its transactions and reduced the withdrawal amount of its affected customers to `500. When the perplexed customers contacted the bank, the situation was explained and new credit/debit cards issued to them, he said.On what led to high incidence of data theft from the ATM centres, the senior CCB officer pinned the blame on lack of CCTV cameras and security personnel.