Dar es Salaam: Banks, police tackle electronic crime

BY DEVOTA MWACHANG`A

The Tanzania Bankers Association has admitted to a spate of unsolved thefts through Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), saying it is working with the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) to solve the problem.

Police also say they have teamed up with financial institutions to address to crack open the methods used to steal money through the electronic system.

An official from TBA who preferred anonymity said the Association has held a number of meetings with the Central Bank in connection with the problems in a bid to come up with strategies to protect the customers’ money.

She said there was a need to conduct thorough research to establish techniques used to steal money from the ATMs and what should be done to address the problem.

The source said among the initiatives TBA was taking included educating the public on the risk of divulging their password to people in anyway who might withdraw the money without being authorized by the owner.

According to the source, they have received many cases from customers of different banks who claimed to have lost their money through their ATM cards, but after investigation it was discovered that those who conducted unauthorized transactions were close relatives.

“Banks have had to pay back the stolen money to their customers, although sometimes the customers’ had failed to protect their passwords, she said, adding: “Some save their password numbers in their mobile phones where it is easy for another person to find and copy them.”

The police force says many people have lost their money in the bank without any trace of the theft.

ATMs and mobile financing services are the target venues as explained by the Director of Criminal Investigation (DCI) Robert Manumba in an interview with The Guardian: “The system is still new in the country and there is an immediate need to increase safety intelligence measures.”

“I can’t openly say what technical measures my office will take…but what I can say now is that we are collaborating with the banks and financial institutions to keep people’s money safe through scientific methods…,” he said.

He acknowledged that his office has received a number of fraud related cases that remain untraceable with victims being blamed for carelessness in the management of their safety PINs, adding: “ATM users must take individual precautions.”

Dar es Salaam Special Zone Commander, Suleiman Kova told The Guardian that his office has arrested several suspects in connection with the electronic fraud.

“We are working on the data and will soon announce our joint measures with the financial institutions and banks against these culprits…” he assured the public.

Recently a number of customers from different banks said they found money withdrawn from their accounts through the ATMs, transactions they say they did not execute, leaving them with unanswered questions as to how safe their money was in the institutions.

A customer with one of the largest banks in the country said money was withdrawn from her account and her smartcard ‘swallowed’ by one of the ATM machines of the bank.

“I went to the ATM machine of my bank to withdraw some money, but unfortunately my card was trapped and I did not withdraw any money on that day since it was a weekend,” said the customer who preferred anonymity.

She claimed that when she went back to the bank on Monday to get her smart-card back, she was kept waiting for some hours, before being informed that her card could not be traced.

Desperately she asked if she could withdraw some money through the teller while they went on looking for the lost card. She was given forms to fill, but when she submitted them to the bank attendant for processing she was told to her shock that her account did not have sufficient funds, despite not withdrawing any money after her salary was deposited.

Another customer at the same bank complained that money was stolen from his account and that he had also been instructed to fill the complaints forms for investigation.

He said that he went to withdraw money from the bank and only to learn that his account had no money.

A customer from another bank complained of his money being withdrawn from the account and never being refunded.

An official from one of the largest bank in the country admitted having trouble with customers whose accounts were tempered with.

He said that ATM thefts also known as card skimming is a critical problem facing a number of financial institutions in the country, especially in Dar es Salaam and it was creating a burden for the banks since they were forced to refund customers the stolen money.

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN (10/01/2013): http://www.ippmedia.com/frontend/index.php?l=49956