As banking-related crime continues to rise, financial institutions are realising they can no longer simply rely on the police to control increasingly sophisticated networks of criminals.
To tackle the issue, banks are taking matters into their own hands and setting up squads to assume the role of police investigators. Siam Commercial Bank is among the institutions getting involved, and has formed an “anti-fraud team” to hunt criminals.
The bank is inviting retired police to work for the team to boost its investigative powers, according to Pongsit Chaichutpornsuk, executive vice-president for financial crime and security services.
Former officers usually have experience of dealing with these sorts of crimes, he says, adding: “We don’t need to teach them anything.”
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Mr Pongsit says serving police are already stretched to full capacity attempting to cope with increasing banking crime. Officers have a duty to every financial institution and are too often swamped by heavy workloads, he says, which is why SCB decided to set up its own unit to tackle crime.
The team started out by taking stock of the various banking crimes. These range from in-house theft of personal financial data perpetrated by bank staff, to robberies at bank branches, ATM skimming rackets and hacking of online financial transactions.
Pol Maj Gen Siriphong Timula, chief of the Technology Crime Suppression Division, says gangs are stealing people’s ATM data through a range of methods.
Some secretly install skimmers to ATM machines. These skimming devices are attached to the slot in which customers insert their bank cards. The devices copy the information stored in the card’s magnetic strip.
Criminals are also embedding tiny cameras into ATM machines, to record customers’ pin numbers.
Other gangsters opt to install fake ATM slots and keyboards on ATMs, allowing them to steal personal information regardless of whether the cardholder attempts to hide the transaction from any potential hidden camera.
“It usually takes just a few hours for gangs to prey on their victims,” Pol Maj Gen Siriphong says.
Once they get the information they want, they transfer the skimmed data onto a blank card and use it to immediately withdraw money. Criminals do not always make the blank cards — also known as “white cards” — themselves. They often simply sell the financial information to gangsters in different countries.
Online banking is also increasingly susceptible to attacks, Pol Maj Gen Siriphong adds. Gangs have been found to pose as customers interested in gaining access to internet banking services. They then examine banking programmes to find flaws in the system.
To steal financial information from a potential victim, criminals can launch a computer virus that “sucks” important financial data from internet banking services during online transactions.
Another tactic is to fool banking customers into installing fake banking applications on their mobile phones. These apps work in the same way as viruses, lifting the vital data as the customer unwittingly uses the service.
“Luckily the banks know the tricks and are alerting their customers,” Pol Maj Gen Siriphong says.
But Mr Pongsit warns that gangs will eventually find new ways to tap into private financial information, despite the bank’s efforts to increase security protection of ATMs and online banking services.
“No matter how impregnable people think their security system is, hackers can get to it,” Pol Maj Gen Siriphong adds.
Despite this, Mr Pongsit says SCB is doing everything in its power to stop crime with the help of the anti-fraud team and police. This makes the institution reasonably safe from illegal attacks, he insists.
Pol Maj Gen Siriphong says initiatives such as the anti-fraud team help police to take legal action against criminals. If all banks did the same, the spread of such attacks could be much more effectively controlled.
In the latest development, police from Crime Suppression Division yesterday arrested five Malaysian suspects for ATM skimming rackets in Hat Yai. A press conference for the issue will be held today in Bangkok.
Contact Crime Track: crimetrack@bangkokpost.co.th