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RIYADH: Several customers in Riyadh have complained that they have become victims of an ATM scam where they have received considerably less money than the amount they specified. In each case, the customers said the receipt specified that they had been paid in full.

One victim told Al-Eqtisadiah business daily that he withdrew SR5,000 from his local ATM but only received SR4,600.

“I registered a complaint on a toll free number to the bank. After 10 days I received a reply telling me that my complaint had been rejected because the ATM had been operating as normal and no discrepancy was detected,” he said.

According to a bank source who did not want to be named, a contracting company that fills teller machines with notes can resort to cheating by placing a lower denomination bill in the slot for a higher denomination bill.

There are separate slots for each note denomination in an ATM. The machine works by allocating money based on the denomination slots and cannot identify the actual note itself.

If SR100 is put in the slot for SR500, the machine will consider the note to be at its supposed higher value.

An unscrupulous employee from the contracting company can steal at least SR400 by putting SR100 bills in the slot for SR500 bills.

The fraud cannot be detected by going through the operation log of the machine because the machine records only the slot from where the money comes and not the actual value of the bill.

Victims of the scam said this is why monitoring of ATM services by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency is needed.

Another man said he was a victim of the scam twice and in different places.

Banks contract private companies to fill ATMs with cash. If the money is supplied in ready cash, fraudulent officials can resort to fraud. If the money was supplied in locked cases for each denomination, no tampering can take place, the bank source said.