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CRIME

New campaign to combat ATM fraud launched

The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) is launching a new campaign to stop ATM fraud following reports that more than 100 Sparkasse customers’ accounts were recently compromised in apparent skimming attacks.

Published: 18 August 2011 10:24 CEST
New campaign to combat ATM fraud launched
Photo: DPA

From October the BKA plans to work with banks to identify more flexible and rapid ways to exchange information and to develop common defence strategies, BKA head Jörg Ziercke told the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung on Thursday.

Ziercke did not go into further detail. A BKA spokesman confirmed the new partnership but also declined further detail.

But Ziercke told WAZ that new strategies were needed to attack fraud, and particularly skimming, in which customers’ ATM card details can be captured by a thief who simply puts a recording device over an ATM.

About 190,000 German consumers are affected each year by skimming, while 60 to 70 customers can be hit in one attack on an ATM.

Ziercke said police were scrambling to stay on top of new, emerging fraud techniques. With the explosion of computer use, thieves have been adopting more sophisticated methods of operation.

“The perpetrators’ methods are getting more sophisticated,” he said. “The theft of credit card data and subsequent fraudulent use has become ‘established.’”

DPA/The Local/mdm

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CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Published: 5 May 2024 12:52 CEST
Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

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