All Credit Unions and Smaller Banks – Be Aware of Your Surroundings!

ATM criminals are constantly on the look-out for easy targets. It doesn’t matter to them who’s ATM it is. But they will probably assume that a financial institution ATM has more cash in it than a convenience store. Particularly if it is a branded ATM out in public spaces.

Sure . . . the “first-time” and novice ATM thieves from the neighborhood are out there. But there is a pretty good chance that they will bungle their first few attempts – and maybe even get caught. The greater volume of losses are the result of organized crime . . .  in its many forms. These crews/gangs often come in from out-of-state; hit a number of ATMs in a given part of town; probably using similar MO’s; then go back home to spend their money. And maybe come back a week later and hit a different part of town.

Are you tracking vandalism and crime against your own fleet? You should! Your efforts to protect that fleet will be a lot more successful if you know what you are up against. Whether it’s a simple spreadsheet or a complex database, you need to record which terminals are being attacked, where they are; and how they are being attacked. As well as how that is changing over time. You may have vulnerabilities you aren’t even aware of. Thieves, however, will find them very quickly and take advantage, if they can. 

ATMIA members are certainly welcome to take up their fight against ATM crime in whatever way works best for their organization. I do suggest that you consider the tools that ASA can make available to you. No matter the number of staff, your entire organization can have access to the ATM crime database for $525 (FI ATM deployer subscription level). It can serve as an enterprise crime tracking tool with over 80 individual data points per incident – use as many or as few as you wish.

Create an alias and anonymously record your own crime data. Instantly retrieve all of those reports. Display them in chart or table form. And export them into a spreadsheet for further analysis. Not only will you have access to your own data whenever needed, you will also have visibility to all other incidents recorded on the database by other contributors – including law enforcement. 

Why not subscribe today and give it a try? We can talk about benefits of ASA Best Practices, quarterly crime trend reports, and other resources next time.

Best regards to all,
David