ATM Thieves Hit the Jackpot

The cops watched as the car drove back and forth in front of the bank. It was early evening on Feb. 25 in Sandy, Utah, and FBI agents had been following the two people inside since they landed in Salt Lake City two days before. Law enforcement officials believed they were part of an organized crime ring responsible for more than 100 recent attacks on ATMs nationwide. When one of the men exited the car and began to approach the bank, the agents went to work, arresting the would-be bank robber just as the machine began spewing out cash.

The ATM-busting technique, known as jackpotting, has been around for almost a decade, and was already widespread in Europe, Latin America, and Asia by the time criminals began using it in the U.S. just a little more than a year ago. It’s not that American criminals were stupider or less savvy than their global counterparts—rather, America’s ATMs were. Until very recently, American debit cards relied on magnetic strips to store payment information. Scammers could simply buy a fake card reader for a few dollars on the dark web, attach it over the real card reader, and skim the card and PIN numbers of anyone who swiped. The rest of the world relies on the chip-and-PIN system of credit card verification—officially called EMV after the three companies that developed it: Europay, Mastercard, and Visa—which makes the cards more difficult to duplicate.