Unauthorized ATM withdrawals all the rage

Alex Johnson Reporter • Profile

Sometime after midnight on June 13 — Friday the 13th — someone rammed a stolen pickup truck through the front of Sayeed Ali’s gasoline station in Houston.

The truck got stuck, so the miscreants had to abandon their target: the station’s automated teller machine. They weren’t there to steal the money from the ATM; they were there to steal the entire machine — keyboard, screen, vault and all.

“This is the first time something like this has ever happened to this store in over 10 years,” said Ali, the station’s manager. But then he added something that police around the country already know: “My brother just told me that this is happening everywhere, especially this kind of thing targeting the ATM.”

Houston police said the June 13 break-in was at least the seventh operation by a ring of smash-and-grab operators who steal large pickup trucks and crash them into storefronts to get at the ATM. They attach a chain to the back of the truck, wrap it around the ATM and yank the machine out of the store.

Other thieves, especially in rural areas dotted with construction sites, bring in a stolen forklift and just drive off with the ATM.

The whole operation can take less than five minutes, and if the ATM has been recently replenished, the thieves can get away with tens of thousands of dollars — assuming they can figure out how to crack open the vault.

And for a variety of reasons, police said, the crime is spiking in astonishing numbers this year.

Organized rings pull off hundreds of jobs
The FBI tracks ATM thefts in its annual Bank Crime Statistics survey. In 2006, the last year for which complete figures are available, 119 thefts of ATMs were reported to the FBI. That was pretty consistent — since 2000, the number has swung roughly between 100 and 200.

Already this year, authorities report more than 140 ATM thefts in North Texas alone, mainly in the Dallas area. Police say organized rings may have been at work there and in Houston, Atlanta, San Diego and Los Angeles; multiple thefts have also been reported in numerous other cities, from Hartford, Conn., to Detroit to Honolulu.

The sharp rise in attempted thefts across the country emerged late last year. No one really knows why ATMs have become such a popular target, but police offer a couple of theories.

First, ATMs appear to offer an unlimited stream of cash, making them attractive in tough economic times. That can be deceiving, however. If you pick the wrong time to make off with one — before it has been restocked — you will have gone to a tremendous amount of risk and effort for very little money.

And while stealing an ATM from a bank is a federal felony, it is a lesser crime in most jurisdictions — often simple theft or criminal mischief —  if the ATM is plucked from a store, a restaurant or a standalone kiosk.

An msnbc.com-NBC News special report The following NBC stations and affiliates contributed to this report: KHNL of Honolulu; KNBC of Los Angeles; KNSD of San Diego; KPRC of Houston; KSL of Salt Lake City, Utah; KXAS of Dallas; WGBA of Green Bay, Wis.; WTVJ of Miami; WVIT of Hartford, Conn.; and WXIA of Atlanta.

Those ATMs are also usually smaller (and therefore lighter), and they are commonly less well-secured than bank machines — many of them stand out in the open on convenience store floors.

Sometime in the past year or so, crooks figured out that they’re not impossible to snatch.

“It’s more of an opportunity for them,” Dallas police Sgt. Gil Cerda said. “It’s an easier opportunity for them.”

Still, that doesn’t mean it’s an easy job.

Last month, three men burst into a convenience store in South Salt Lake, Utah. While two of the men distracted the clerk, the third went behind the counter. Surveillance video showed the relatively small man, with tattoos down both arms, trying to wrestle the ATM from its bolted-down footing.

South Salt Lake police Lt. Gary Keller said the men left empty-handed.

“It certainly was humorous, because what’s he going to do with a 300- to 400-pound machine once he gets it loose?” Keller said.

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