FRAUD involving the use of automated teller machines (ATM) have been on the rise in the past few years, and the government does not seem to see it as a serious problem and much less, to care enough for those who have fallen victims or those would-be victims.
Official figures showed that there were 1,600 incidents of ATM fraud ripping off ordinary depositors some P175 million in 2012 alone.
The amount loss to ATM fraud then rose up to P220-million from the recorded 1,272 incidents in the following year. That is 26% higher in a year.
In May 2014, Johny Noe Ravalo, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) assistant governor for Financial Supervision Research and Consumer Protection subsector, claimed that the current ATM fraud cases rose to 1,718 with an equivalent loss of P205-million in 2014.
If Ravalo’s latest figures were accurate, ATM fraud cases have been rising up from the last two years and five months ago, not to mention the remaining months of 2014 and early this year.
One could only guess that the figures must be more than what are reported in the media.
But what is disturbing is that the BSP does not consider ATM fraud as a serious problem. In fact, BSP considers the incidents of ATM fraud as “low” in comparison to the huge number of ATM users nationwide.
There are over 44.2-million ATM cardholders all over the country.
Even the Department of Justice-Office of Cybercrime, in its Annual Report, maintained that ATM fraud accounts only one percent in the distribution of crime committed in 2014.
Many good people I know are incredulous.
They could not believe how the BSP and DOJ could turn deaf ears to the many stories of people who have been victimized by ATM fraud, along with unauthorized withdrawals and use of their stolen credit cards and debit cards.
We learned that when victims complained that fraudulent transactions were indeed committed without their fault, the bank would reimburse the amount loss on condition that the victims would sign a waiver that they would not report it to authorities.
Now we know why ATM fraud remains unabated simply because unscrupulous commercial banks are surreptitiously hiding it from the government on how many millions of depositors’ hard-earned money are actually being stolen every day. GLOCAL PINOY/FJ MAGLALANG
