ATM ripoff uses glued-down keys

By Cory Doctorow at 5:11 am Thursday, Mar 17

ATM crooks in San Francisco have a clever trick: they glue down the ENTER, CANCEL and CLEAR buttons on an ATM, and wait for customers to go into the bank to complain. The fraudsters then complete the transaction using the on-screen equivalents -- the victim having already keyed in a PIN -- and skip away before the victim comes back out.

Since January, there have been four such thefts in the Richmond District alone, Corriea said.

"And you have to figure it's not always reported to us," Corriea said.

Often, bank customers don't notice the thefts for days, San Francisco police spokesman Officer Albie Esparza said.

"Best thing for consumers is to monitor their bank account," Esparza said.

There are several nonviolent ways crooks can steal cash from ATMs, but the glue method is less risky, Corriea said.

A thief caught applying glue to an ATM would be slapped with a misdemeanor vandalism charge, but likely won't face a felony fraud charge because it isn't easy to prove that the crook intended to steal, Corriea said.

Glue-gun goons target unwary ATM users (via Schneier)

(Image: Glue, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from kodomut's photostream)