Revealed! How Scammers Defraud ATM Users

It has been four years since the Central Bank of Nigeria introduced the Cashless Nigeria Policy. Its aim was to encourage the use of electronic systems for all monetary transactions.

The policy has yielded benefits: it makes many transactions simpler and safer for more people. There has been an increase in fraud in the banking and payment systems. These crimes are carried out using the  information and communications technology that has flourished in Nigeria since the early 2000s

Automated Teller Machine (ATM) fraud is gradually becoming an issue of serious concern in mega cities across the country. The crime has become a past time among the young generation of urban dwellers.

The operators of this illegal business have no doubt deprived many people of their hard-earned resources as the youth leverage on the imbalance of technological adaptation to extort the unsuspecting users of ATM, who are naïve about the technology.

In Kano, until recently when the state police command paraded a syndicate of ATM fraudsters, no one ever expected that most of the young men thronging the ATM points in the evening hours are there on a mission. One of the suspects, Umar Ya’u a.k.a Gora, a resident of Tudun Maliki, Zoo Road of Kano metropolis, in his confessional statement said he had bought a car out of the proceeds of the crime.