MANILA: Eight persons, including Cebu City Councilor Dave Tumulak, have fallen victim to automated teller machine (ATM) scams by foreign-looking nationals who withdraw more than P400,000 from their accounts, local media reports said.
The series of unauthorized withdrawals from ATM bank accounts of seven persons all happened on Nov. 16 inside a mall in Naga City in southern Cebu, where they lost a total of P423,900 to bank scammers, reported Inquirer.
The Naga City incident happened barely a day after Tumulak expressed outrage over the hacking of his Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) payroll account where bank scam artists had taken an unspecified amount of money during withdrawals from September 19 to Nov. 9, the report said.
In both incidents, closed-circuit television camera (CCTV) footage reportedly indicated that the perpetrators in the skimming activities were not Filipinos, according to both the police and the victims.
Skimming involves the use of an electronic device attached to the ATM that records personal information from the card, including the pin number, giving scammers access to a client’s bank account.
Tumulak, a second-term city councilor, reportedly said that he reported last week to LBP that a big amount of money was missing in his ATM account, which holds his salary from the city government, but he claimed he has not been getting any cooperation from the bank.
He was quoted as saying that he was angry that the bank did not inform him beforehand of the unauthorized withdrawals, amounting to about P50,000 a day.
“In other banks, if there are compromise cases, they will inform the depositor. But in my case, even a single text, wala (there was none),” he was quoted as saying.
To track down the suspect, Tumulak reportedly requested other banks with ATMs in the same area where his deposits were withdrawn to give him a photo of the person who made the withdrawals, but he also did not receive any help from these banks.
A foreign national is the suspect of the scheme as shown in a video taken by a CCTV installed in a nearby establishment, reported Inquirer.
Tumulak reportedly said the incident was ironic considering that he is the deputy mayor for police matters and the chairman of the city council’s committee on public order and safety and was also the one who formulated the implementing rules and regulation on the placement of CCTVs all over the city.
“They’re trying to test my intelligence on technology. Ako gyuy gitestingan. Mura mag bugal-bugal (They made a fool out of me),” he was quoted as saying by Inquirer.
Tumulak said he tried to give the banks a copy of the video to alert them about the identity of the suspect, but all the banks he approached refused to receive the video. The councilor said he was now planning to file charges against these banks that he declined to name, the report said.
