ATM in 16 districts of Japan were stolen, 1.4 billion dollars vanished all of a sudden

We have to say that fraudsters are getting better and better at their tricks. Reported by Daily News, a group of criminals have withdrawn cash from 1400 ATM from convenience store in 16 districts of Japan including Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Kanagawa, Aichi, Nagasaki, Hyogo, Chiba and Niigata.

Many cases of ATM being stolen have involved with a technological means named ATM Skimming, which appeared a long time ago. Criminals use magnetic stripe, ATM malware or data leak to obtain detail information of credit cards or bank cards and then steal cash or shop online using the so-called “carder” and money mule. Money mule refers to people who use improper means to transfer money from a country to another country, taking advantage of Internet to conduct fraud.

In special cases, hackers used clone credit cards contained bank account information from South Africa.

Criminal group of a hundred people

This criminal group has about 100 people. We have reasons to believe that they have obtained the maximum amount of money of the ATM, -100000 Yan (900 dollars) and conducted withdraw operation to 1400 ATM machines.

There was no participant arrested for now. However, Japanese police is at present investigating the CCTV to look for the suspect and cooperating with South African police about how the credit card information is leaked.

This incident shows that guarantee the security and effectiveness of data instead of using the data right away is the key movement of this criminal group stealing credit card data.

Therefore, be careful when you use any ATM. If you find the card slot damaged on the machine, do not use it and report to the staff.

Article source: FreeBuf