How People Can Steal Your Money With ATMs

It might seem crazy to think that your money can even be stolen by other people through ATMs but, between 2014 and 2015, a Romanian man named Aurel Eremia engaged in ATM fraud by installing skimming devices onto the Navy Federal Credit Union (NFCU) ATMs and by also attaching small cameras on the ATMs so that it would be aimed at the keypad that the person would use to type in their PIN number.

By doing this, Eremia was able to obtain many people’s financial information and their personal identification as well. By committing this ATM fraud, Eremia was able to cause losses that were about hundreds of thousands of dollars for the NFCU and the customers of the NFCU.

After Eremia was able to electronically transfer the personal information that he obtained from the people using the ATM that he tampered with to himself, he then proceeded to use that information to gain access to those people’s bank accounts as well as their credit accounts. By doing this, he was able to re-encode the account numbers so that it could be put on the magnetic strips of different cards. With both the re-encoded cards as well as the correct PIN number, Eremia was capable of taking money out of the accounts of many people that were customers of NFCU.

The person involved in this crime was Aurel Eremia, the fraud that he committed was ATM skimming fraud and the way he committed this crime was by attaching small cameras to the inside of ATMs so that was able to record and see the PIN numbers that people imputed into the ATMs. When Eremia was eventually caught, he pleaded guilty to the charges that he was given.

The charges that Eremia had received were aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit bank fraud. The maximum penalty for these charges could land Eremia in jail for about 30 years for the conspiracy charge and he would also have to spend at least 2 more years in prison for the aggravated identity theft charge and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Brian Samuels and Kaitlin Cooke prosecuted the case.

One of the red flags in this case are the withdrawals that people were seeing from their accounts which they should have reported immediately after seeing since those withdrawals most likely weren’t from them. This fraud could have been identified and even could have been prevented if the people that used the ATMs made sure to check places that a camera could’ve been placed and if they did see a camera on the ATM they should have reported it to the owners of the ATM.

Source:

• Man pleads guilty to ATM skimming fraud that targeted Navy federal. Eastern District of Virginia | Man Pleads Guilty to ATM Skimming Fraud that Targeted Navy Federal | United States Department of Justice. (2023, April 18). https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/man-pleads-guilty-atm-skimming-fraud-targeted-navy-federal