ATM Card Fraud: Why Taking Help From Strangers Could Be Risky

Withdrawing money through an ATM card isn’t risky, but in the event of a transaction failure for some reason, seeking help from strangers might be. It happened in Panchkula, Kalka, and nearby areas, where the fraudsters targeted senior citizens and uninformed people, swapped their cards, and fraudulently withdrew money from their accounts. 

These fraudsters would approach people entering an ATM to withdraw money from the ATM and offer help with making the cash withdrawal. They would gain the trust of victims and trick them into revealing their ATM PIN. 

Once the PIN was revealed, they would swap the original ATM card with a similar-looking card and make the transaction. As the transaction would fail due to the use of the wrong card, they would make an excuse saying the ATM card was not working, leaving the victims unaware that the card had been swapped.

According to a report by the New Indian Express, Panchkula Police have now arrested two alleged fraudsters from the gang and recovered 70 ATM cards, two mobile phones, and a point-of-sale (POS) machine.

Reportedly, the two accused are from Hisar and Bhiwani districts of Haryana. The Cyber Crime Police Station has arrested them following the tip-off that two men are roaming around the ATM in the Sector 20 market with a POS machine and a number of ATM cards. The police arrested them on October 20, 2026.

During the questioning, the accused told the police that at times, they have also picked up the ATM cards that people forget in the machine and used them to withdraw money.

The police are checking details of the cards to find out the ATM card's real owners and examining the links with other complaints as well.  

ATM frauds are not new; whether it's card cloning or tricking people into revealing their ATM PIN, fraudsters use different tricks to defraud people. 

The current digital measures are even riskier than this. One needs to be careful about sharing their personal details, passwords, PINs, etc., and should not share them with anyone, especially strangers, and in case a fraud has happened, immediately inform the bank, block the card, and inform the police.

In this case, the police found traces of fraudsters while investigating another case involving an elderly. The CCTV footage of the faces related to that case matched with these people roaming around the ATM, which led the police to catch hold of them for their possible involvement in other fraud incidents as well.

The investigation is underway, and the police suspect that there could be more victims than the reported ones. The police have said they will further identify the ATMs in Haryana and Delhi from which the fraudsters have allegedly withdrawn the money or picked up the ATM cards, and investigate further to establish the extent of the racket.